The object and method of zoological nomenclature / by David Sharp.

  • David Sharp
Date:
1873
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The object and method of zoological nomenclature / by David Sharp. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    classifications of their great master, and ascertaining how far his divisions were correctly made. The result that fol- lowed is instructive to us. Let us take one instance. pliIadonmand In the twelfth edition of the Systema Natures Linnaeus fission of gen- divided his order Coleoptera into 29 genera; these 29 genera comprising 891 species. His pupil, Fabricius, undertook a scrutiny of the Coleoptera, and in 1801 published at Kiel his “ Systema Eleutheratorum” (be it noted in passing that he changed the name Coleoptera for that of Eleutherata), and he divided the order into 18 r genera, comprising about 5000 species! Thus in 35 years the genera of Coleoptera had increased sixfold, and this increase, we must observe, was not merely the result of the discovery of new objects unknown to Linnaeus, but was caused in large part by the subdivision of the Linnaean genera into smaller ones, or by their entire rearrangement. It was in fact a totally fresh classification of Coleoptera, so far as their genera are concerned. The process thus instituted by Fabricius has been continued by others, and it will be sufficient for our purpose if we remark, without following its details, that the 29 genera of Linnaeus, multiplied by Fabricius to 181, have now become ro,ooo, and in a few years will be 20,000. How futile, then, was the hope of Linnaeus that he had completed a classification, and was therefore in a position to make a permanent nomenclature! It is clear that he did not anticipate the enormous change that would take place in his successors’ ideas as to genera, otherwise he would not have based his system of nomen- clature on the genus. And it is still more certain that he did not foresee that the progress of science would require that the speedy analytical system should be exchanged for, or corrected by, the slower but more exact method of synthetical classification. Under these circumstances, it is no wonder that the Linnaean nomenclature has not been preserved in its in- tegrity. Nevertheless, his method has .been preserved at any rate to some extent, and the question arises, whether we can make use of the Linnaean system of nomenclature in the present state of scientific research, or whether it must be abandoned for a new and more precise method.
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