Peter, I am sorry, but I can’t help having the impression that you didn’t read my post thoroughly and completely. Don’t be cross with me: Your answer seems to be the spontaneous reaction of someone who is annoyed of being criticised.
If you read my post again you will find at last that we share a similar opinion: One method (e.g., museum taxonomy) is not enough for thoroughly describing a new species.
This is something I already agreed with you in my last post.
But how but “condemnation” would you call this phrasing:
The old science of the birds was a pure museum-science. People shot the birds and then science began: measuring, weighting, describing the bodies and so on. We can thank god that this has ended by the protest of many laymen in the late 19. century! But in our fish, we still have that museum-taxonomy. That is the problem.
I could not let this form of words pass unchallenged. There’s nothing that let’s us recognize that you still believe this method to be a valuable one – among many others. It simply sounds like a clear and total refusal. It definitely doesn’t sound like:
“entirely insufficient for describing new species of Paros in cases where only slight differences in structure and colouring are to be seen at the phenotypes”
I did not mean to offend you – but I think it should be permitted to contradict you if one has another opinion (or knowledge!).
(By the way – killing and collecting animals for museum collections was definitely not ended by layman protests by end of the 19th century. There have been many expeditions which collected lots of animals for scientific purposes up to the 60s and 70s of the 20th century …)