THE VALUE OF SCIENTIFIC NOMENCLATURE
One may well ask why we do not simply say “milkweed butterfly” and have done with it, but this term refers merely to the fact that the caterpillar feeds upon a certain plant, while Anosia plexippus places the specimen definitely in the scientific scheme of things, and designates important structural distinctions which have nothing to do with milkweeds. The average American is prone to call any insect a “bug” or “moth-miller” or some such unenlightening name, so that many butterflies have no common English name at all, while others have many different names which vary widely in different parts of the country. Besides, the Greek and Latin names are understood by scientists in all countries, and are less liable to corruption than terms taken from the modern languages.
There are difficulties enough in the scientific nomenclature, without complicating matters by the introduction of popular names. It is a fixed rule in science that the first man to discover and describe a species has the right to name it, and that whatever name he chooses shall be used by everybody forever, but scientists are only human after all, and are always anxious to discover new species and name them after their friends or sweethearts. It often happens that a single species is described independently by several authors, each of which applies a name of his own devising; in this case the first is the real name, and the others are called synonyms.
In writing about butterflies it is not customary to spell out the generic name; one does not write Dione vanillae, but merely D. vanillae. It is usual also to add the name of the man who first named the species, so that the name becomes D. vanillae, Linnaeus, or D. vanillae, Linn. In conversation one may omit the name of the genus altogether, and refer to the butterfly simply as Vanillae. It is well to remember that scientific Latin in this country is pronounced in the insular fashion—that is, the words are pronounced as if they were English.