because of tautonomy, and thus Apus apus apus may be a valid designation of a sub-species if the names are otherwise valid.
It has happened frequently and continues to happen that a creature is discovered to have been given more than one name. Which of these is valid? The decision of this is one of the most difficult and controverted problems in nomenclature. In the hope of settling it by some system which should be as nearly as possible automatic and should leave the least possible to the inclination or choice of the individual worker, there was formulated what is called the rule of priority. The valid name of a genus or species is that name under which it was first designated, but with the conditions first that the name was published and accompanied by an indication, definition or description, and second that the author applied the principles of binary nomenclature. The tenth edition of Linnaeus’ Systema naturae (1758) is the work that first consistently applied the binary system to zoology generally and is accepted as the starting-point of zoological nomenclature. Beginning from this the oldest available name is therefore to be retained. The application of the rule of priority is in many cases very difficult, but the labours of zoologists in many groups are rapidly succeeding in making the necessary direct and incidental changes in nomenclature, whilst, with regard to recent work, the rule is invaluable. A special difficulty has, however, arisen and is pressing so acutely that a most important modification is likely to be introduced. To systematists working with a large series of species in a museum or collection, one species is as important as another, and changes of names even of familiar animals are matters of little moment. But a comparatively small number of animals hold a prominent place in the attention of zoologists who are not specially systematists and of the public interested in natural history. It is complained that application of the rules of priority is changing the names of many familiar animals, designations that are sanctioned by long usage in museums and laboratories, in the famous treatises of comparative anatomy, of general biology, of travel, medicine, and the sciences and subjects closely related to zoology. There is being claimed, in fact, protection against the law of priority for a certain number of such familiar and customary appellations. The machinery for drafting such a list of exceptions exists in the permanent nomenclature commission of the International Congress of Zoology, and there is more than a hope that this change will come into operation.
To make the denotation of zoological names precise, exact workers are endeavouring to associate the conception of types with names, a process which can be made simple and definite with new work, but which presents great difficulties in the attempt to apply it to existing terms. Every family should have designated one of its genera as the type genus, every genus a type species and so forth. In the case of species or sub-species the type is a single specimen, either the only one before the author when writing his description, or one definitely selected by him, the others being paratypes. Such type specimens are the keynote of modern expert systematic work and their careful preservation and registration is of fundamental importance. A co-type is one of several specimens which have together formed the basis of a species, no one of them having been selected by the author as a type. A topotype is a specimen killed at the typical locality. (P. C. M.)
ZOOLOGY (from Gr. ζῷον, a living thing, and λόγος, theory), that portion of biology (q.v.) which relates to animals, as distinguished from that portion (Botany) which is concerned with plants.
History
There is something almost pathetic in the childish wonder and delight with which mankind in its earlier phases of civilization gathered up and treasured stories of strange animals from distant lands or deep seas, such as are recorded in the Physiologus, in Albertus Magnus, and even at the present day in the popular treatises of Japan and China. That omnivorous universally credulous stage, which may be called the “legendary,” was succeeded by the age of collectors and travellers, when many of the strange stories believed in were actually demonstrated as true by the living or preserved trophies brought to Europe. The Change
in the
character
of the
science.possibility of verification established verification as a habit; and the collecting of things, instead of the accumulating of reports, developed a new faculty of minute observation. The early collectors of natural curiosities were the founders of zoological science, and to this day the naturalist traveller and his correlative, the museum curator and systematists, play a most important part in the progress of zoology. Indeed, the historical and present importance of this aspect or branch of zoological science is so great that the name “zoology” has until recently been associated entirely with it, to the exclusion of the study of minute anatomical structure and function which have been distinguished as anatomy and physiology. Anatomy and the study of animal mechanism, animal physics and animal chemistry, all of which form part of a true zoology, were excluded from the usual definition of the word by the mere accident that the zoologist had his museum but not his garden of living specimens as the botanist had,[1] and,
whilst the zoologist was thus deprived of the means of anatomical
and physiological study—only later supplied by the method of preserving animal bodies in alcohol—the demands of medicine for a knowledge of the structure of the human animal brought into existence a separate and special study of human anatomy and physiology.
From these special studies of human structure the knowledge of the anatomy of animals has proceeded, the same investigator who had made himself acquainted with the structure of the human body desiring to compare with the standard given by human anatomy the structures of other animals. Thus comparative anatomy came into existence as a branch of inquiry apart from zoology, and it was only in the latter part of the 19th century that the limitation of the word “zoology” to a knowledge of animals which expressly excludes the consideration of their internal structure was rejected by the general consent of those concerned in the progress of science. It is now generally recognized that it is mere tautology to speak of zoology and comparative anatomy, and that museum naturalists must give attention as well to the inside as to the outside of animals.
Scientific zoology really started in the 16th century with the awakening of the new spirit of observation and exploration, but for a long time ran a separate course uninfluenced by the progress of the medical studies of anatomy and physiology. The active search for knowledge by means of observation and experiment found its natural home in the universities. Owing to the connexion of medicine with these seats of learning, it was natural that the study of the structure and functions of the human body and of the animals nearest to man should take root there; the spirit of inquiry which now for the first time became general showed itself in the anatomical schools of the Italian universities of the 16th century, and spread fifty years later to Oxford.
In the 17th century the lovers of the new philosophy, the investigators of nature by means of observation and experiment, banded themselves into academies or societies for mutual support and intercourse. The first founded of surviving European academies, the Academia Naturae Curiosorum (1651),[2] especially confined itself to the description and illustration of the structure of plants and animals; eleven years later (1662) the Royal Society of London was incorporated by royal charter, having existed without a name or fixed organization for
- ↑ The medieval attitude towards both plants and animals had no relation to real knowledge, but was part of a peculiar and in itself highly interesting mysticism. A fantastic and elaborate doctrine of symbolism existed which comprised all nature; witchcraft, alchemy and medicine were its practical expressions. Animals as well as plants were regarded as “simples” and used in medicine, and a knowledge of them was valued from this point of view.
- ↑ The Academia Secretorum Naturae was founded at Naples in 1560, but was suppressed by the ecclesiastical authorities.
