On Zoological Classification

34

ON ZOOLOGICAL

ON ZOOLOGICAL

CLASSIFICATION.

CLASSIFICATION.

BY ERNEST A. ELLIOTT, F . Z . S . , F . E . S . , etc..

THE Index of our Transactions' first volume, issued to Members last January, may have given some of us pause to wonder how such an appalling concatenation of Latin " words " had come to be thrown into any sort of recognizable order. Some slight degree of similar uncertainty in Classification has now and again peeped out at our Meetings ; but the whole can be dispersed by a very few simple words of explanation. Science is the acme of common sense ; and any confusion which assails our System of Classification arises solely from the necessary disparitv of intelligence among scientists.

Let us ascend, as does our nomenclature, from the singular to the general. In order that the System may cohere, it is still presumed that a SPECIES is a fixed unit (though we all are aware that this unit itself may be divisible into varieties, races, forms and aberrations). T o be scientifically recognized as such, a species must have had its Description printed in some scientific publication : those appearing in such valuable, but ephemeral, newspapers as the E. Anglian Daily Times, The Bury or Morning Post, would be recognized no more than others appearing in The Strand Magazine and similar populär periodicals : the source must be scientific.—To a lesser degree, it is well that its Description should be fathered by some central organ, e.g. a widelysubscribed periodical like " The Entomologist," the Transactions of one of the London learned societies, or a comprehensive Standard work ; and not in provincial publications, no matter how excellent they be. Hence it is good form that our Hon. Secretary should bring forward, as New to Science, Dicopus cervus in our local Transactions (i, p. 50) but Describe it in the London " Entomologist " (1931, p. 16), with a later note locating its Description in our Trans. (1932, p. 227) ; and bad form that Mr. R . Lydekker, F . R . S . , etc., should describe his new Hyperoodon taylori in the provincial Victoria History of Suffolk (1911, p. 41).

So there is the specific Description, necessarily published and so on sale to all the world—privately printed sheets are, at least nominally, excluded—always available. This is invariably the second name by which an animal is known; and the abbreviation, following this second name, is that of the scientist who described the name.

Evolution has produced an indefinite number of species that are related to each other by some small, but constant, outstanding character : a wing-vein, a hair, a feather, a tooth. This common character links those species which bear it together, and also

ON ZOOLOGICAL

CLASSIFICATION.

35

separates them from those that do not bear it, into a small group termed a GENUS. Each genus must be described with as much circumspection as a species ; but its acceptation and adoption or rejection, by individual scientists is less strict than in the case of species: i.e., one worker may consider a character or combination of characters to be fundamental, which another worker may regard as instable and consequently quite unreliable • whether the character be so is largely a matter of personal experience, and its persistency is impossible to aver with inadequate matenal at hand. T h e generic is the of the two by which every animal is known.

firstname

Just as Species naturally segregate into Genera, so groups of Genera fall into T n b e s , and T r i b e s in their turn merge together into r amilies by their possession of some of the more important characters.

T h u s the whole Classification is gradually built up upon the animals' structure, ascending from its smallest specific peculiarities to its largest and most conspicuous ones, the last occurnng in common in so large a number of species, genera, tribes and families that certain families themselves finally combine to constitute those greatest Divisions that everybodv AvwVsces

Bird$

' ^

^

etC

'

= scientificall

y

Mammalia,

T h e basic rule of this binomial nomenclature (we will have nothing to do with the trinomial, e.g. or the Lion-species and of the Cave-dwelling variety—which is much more lucidly expressed as Linn., var.

Felix leo-spelaa—i.e. a Cat Felix leo, sbelrea,

e^ a 1 uLAW, ° F P r i o r i t y Over it so much ink has been expended that the explanation here shall be cut and dried l a lLrCflSSaly

superbus,

0 n l y that' if Dr- V i n t e r anywhere caught f n e w t 0 s c i e n c e a n d described it as Vint., at the top of page 326 of a London, Paris, Vienna,

t 0

say

Papilio

W

and if M 3 v i M y ° , t h e r " C e n t r a l " P l a c e ' s s c i e n t i f i c publication : and it M r . Moore discovered the same species, of what sex soever or e k i r i ° W T g , a g ° c a P t u r e d , in the Ipswich Museum V C ° r d e a d ' a n d d e s c " b e d it at page 327 or even low Monr ° n , u P a g e L 3 2 6 - ° f t h e s a m e P u blication as ' ' f a n - k Cn f ß r S t n a m e w o u l d " s t a n d , " and the second t C r t h a n P' suPerbusthe d J In a general way, " r! » t h e / e a r o f Publication is sufficient to establish such case T f 3 n u f . P a S ' n a t i o n rarely crops up except in the case of an author himself describing the opposite sexes of the

Papilio horridus,

kCnly 38 d i s t i - t ssuedTeT ones. Early descriptions! svsteL, "" t h e m o d e r n m e t h o d s describing became inVari3bly USel6SS for th P i S r scientific'purposes of the ten l IV' c restricted to begin with the publication y aM s h ? ° f u C a r l L l n n ^ ' s " S y s t e m a N a t u r a » in the

t^ o S i r ^

1

we need never recede