Let me here suggest the utility of first getting at the _meaning_ of scientific terms as an immense assistance towards fixing them in the memory. In the construction of generic and specific names some peculiarity is, or should be, described. This I have endeavoured to keep before the reader throughout this volume; and by first looking at the _meaning_ of the word, it is at once simplified, while that peculiar feature for which it is named is also grasped. Occasionally a name baffles us, it is true, and one fails to see cause or reason in it; but this is an exception. Other names without apparent reason are from persons, as, for instance, when a Mr. Smith thinks to immortalize himself by calling a snake _Coluber smithii_. Probably the next observer would find this too general to be of much use, and discover some peculiarity more worthy of a specific. Not long ago, when Lacerda was experimenting with our distinguished ophidian, the ‘Curucucu’ (_Bothrops_ or _Lachesis rhombeata_), it was variously introduced to the public through the daily press, as the _Bothraps rhambeata_, the _Hachesis rhambeata_, and the _Lachesis rhambeata_. It is doubtful whether many of the ‘general public’ imagined these three names to represent the same snake, or whether—except possibly from the last generic one—they could form any idea of the reptile therefrom. Of the many papers that fell under one’s notice, _Land and Water_ alone on this occasion spelt the words correctly. As yet there is no journal devoted to the Reptilia, and the study is evidently not attractive. Nor do we expect all naturalists to be ophiologists; but those of the editors who were zoologists might have hazarded a guess and made sense of the generic _Lachesis_, seeing that a deadly, fateful serpent was intended. Some of the scientific ‘weeklies’ having started the wrong names, unscientific ‘dailies’ deferentially transcribed them. The errors were chiefly traceable to caligraphy, and are mentioned here to exemplify the advantage of seeking a meaning in scientific appellations, the meanings of some names being so obvious that in spite of a wrong letter you may frequently decide upon them.