Rapid responses are electronic comments to the editor. They enable our users
to debate issues raised in articles published on bmj.com. A rapid response
is first posted online. If you need the URL (web address) of an individual
response, simply click on the response headline and copy the URL from the
browser window. A proportion of responses will, after editing, be published
online and in the print journal as letters, which are indexed in PubMed.
Rapid responses are not indexed in PubMed and they are not journal articles.
The BMJ reserves the right to remove responses which are being
wilfully misrepresented as published articles or when it is brought to our
attention that a response spreads misinformation.
From March 2022, the word limit for rapid responses will be 600 words not
including references and author details. We will no longer post responses
that exceed this limit.
The word limit for letters selected from posted responses remains 300 words.
Theodore Dalrymple's erudite and amusing review (as ever) of Highsmith's horror story "The Quest for Blank Claveringi" raises a query as to the capitalisation of the eponymous Clavinger in the second place of a scientific binomial. This opens a small can of worms which, wearing my hat as former president of the London Natural History Society, I will attempt to untangle.
Whilst it is true that the second part of a binomial is these days invariably lower case throughout, until at least 1953 if the specific epithet related to a person it was capitalised. A glance at any text book of a biological subject published before about 1955 will confirm that. The rules changed (as they regularly do) after that so that by 1967 all epithets were uniformly lower case. Thus Highsmith may have recalled her studies of 20 years before when writing her story first published in 1970.
I have not read the story so do not know if it is set in an earlier era such as the 1930s when capitalisation of Clavingeri would have been historically correct. But then two further points of nomenclatural pedantry are relevant. The correct form of a male person's name in a scientific epithet ends with ...ii thus Blank Clavingerii. However it gets worse since one may not use one's own name in describing a new species. Clavinger would have had to donate the type specimen to a colleague to get it described (in Latin) and properly published, before he could hope to be immortalised by way of inclusion of his name. Perhaps, staying with the story line, dying in the way he did would have ensured that the Malacologist who eventually received a specimen to describe would honour the finder who died heroically in the act of collecting it.
Re: Pedantry and Patricia Highsmith
Theodore Dalrymple's erudite and amusing review (as ever) of Highsmith's horror story "The Quest for Blank Claveringi" raises a query as to the capitalisation of the eponymous Clavinger in the second place of a scientific binomial. This opens a small can of worms which, wearing my hat as former president of the London Natural History Society, I will attempt to untangle.
Whilst it is true that the second part of a binomial is these days invariably lower case throughout, until at least 1953 if the specific epithet related to a person it was capitalised. A glance at any text book of a biological subject published before about 1955 will confirm that. The rules changed (as they regularly do) after that so that by 1967 all epithets were uniformly lower case. Thus Highsmith may have recalled her studies of 20 years before when writing her story first published in 1970.
I have not read the story so do not know if it is set in an earlier era such as the 1930s when capitalisation of Clavingeri would have been historically correct. But then two further points of nomenclatural pedantry are relevant. The correct form of a male person's name in a scientific epithet ends with ...ii thus Blank Clavingerii. However it gets worse since one may not use one's own name in describing a new species. Clavinger would have had to donate the type specimen to a colleague to get it described (in Latin) and properly published, before he could hope to be immortalised by way of inclusion of his name. Perhaps, staying with the story line, dying in the way he did would have ensured that the Malacologist who eventually received a specimen to describe would honour the finder who died heroically in the act of collecting it.
Competing interests: No competing interests