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WHAT IS A GENUS?*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 May 2012
Extract
This question is one that it is extremely difficult to answer satisfactiorilly.
The great naturalist, Agassiz, in his Essay on Classification, wrote:
“Genera are mos closely allied groups of animals differing **** simply in the ultimate structural peculiarities of some of their parts.”
The Century Dictionary defines genus as “a classificatory group ranking next above the species, containing a group a species (sometimes a single species) possessing certain structural characters different from those of any others.” It goes on, however, to say: “The value assigned to a genus is wholly arbitrary–that is, it is considered generic and thus constitute a genus; and genera are constantly modified and shifted by specialists, the tendency being mostly to restriction of genera, with the constant multiplication of their numbers, and the coinage of new generic names.
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- Copyright © Entomological Society of Canada 1902
References
page 187 note * Read before the Montreal Branch, 13th May, 1902.
page 187 note † The question whether the generic name Euchætes, proposed by Harris, or Euchætias, proposed by me, should be used for the genus of which this moth is the type, I am willing to leave to the pricipal authorities on such matters to decide, but wish to say what I perhaps did not make sufficiently clear in my note on page 52 (correcting my error in regard to the name I proposed for a genus in the Coleoptera), that in giving Mr. Henshaw' views upon the subject, as conveyed to me by letter, I did not mean it to be inferred that I accepted or concurred in them.
page 188 note * Journal N. Y. Ent. Soc., I–II.
page 192 note * In Ent. News, XIII. 192, reference is made to Psychophora Fasciata, Skinner, one specimen of which received by Dr. Dyar was found to agree with the Noctuidæ in venation, while the next one received had the venation typical of the Geometridæ, thus showing the sometimes unsatisfactory nature of these characters.