Abstract
MR. REGAN is quite right to direct attention to the fact, which I should have noted, that the confident statement in the text-book concerning the survival of a species of Helix submitted to a temperature of 120° C. had been altered from “has been known” to “has been said,” but I still think it would have been better to have omitted it altogether. Pictet in his paper does not say whether the degrees he cites were registered by any one of the more usual thermometers or by a scale of his own (the “C” is an addition in the text-book), and his paper altogether does not suggest that amount of accuracy which the subject demanded. The admission that a system of nomenclature nearly a quarter of a century old has been deliberately adhered to in a work supposedly brought up-to-date, speaks for itself. Much progress has been made in this section of systematic zoology since 1908, and according to all the Rules the pearl oyster (Pinctada) has no right to the name Margaritifera, which belongs to the pearl mussel. There are other examples in the “Guide” of what a malacologist of to-day would call misnaming.
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"Guide to the Mollusca". Nature 112, 166 (1923). https://doi.org/10.1038/112166c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/112166c0
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