An Index to the Opinions Rendered by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature

Abstract

s are to the research worker. The original must be consulted before one may catch the full significance of the article. The 133 opinions already published have far greater significance than that which pertains to the individual cases with which they deal. In the aggregate, they represent guide posts of professional opinion on allied problems and as such they constitute an essential complement to the rules, highly comparable to the records of cases supplementing the text of the law in the legal profession. To the majority of workers in nomenclature, these opinions and rulings are like a library without a catalog and lacking any sequential arrangement. Even knowing that a given item is there, it can be located only by hunting for it. A number of years ago the present writer prepared an analytical index to the opinions for his personal use and for the convenience of research workers in his laboratory. The preliminary index thus prepared included only the major problems on which action had been taken. A series of successive This content downloaded from 157.55.39.215 on Wed, 31 Aug 2016 04:45:17 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 226 THE AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST combings of the text of the opinions has greatly expanded the original index. Several workers, including the late Dr. Charles Wardell Stiles, have expressed the belief that a compilation of this sort would be welcomed by all zoologists who deal with problems in taxonomy. Presumably on the completion of Volume 73 of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, an official index will be prepared. In the meantime, the present compilation may serve the workers more satisfactorily than the available alternative procedures of reading through or thumbing through the 133 opinions to locate a point in question. Dr. C. G. Abbott, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, has kindly consented to the publication of this