Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 56(1) March 1999 49 because Stokes's name had been universally accepted by protozoologists. Foissner's resurrection of Fromentel's name has not been universally accepted, and both names are now finding frequent use in the literature. The reason for this unfortunate state of affairs is that a controversy that was settled by mutual agreement among protozoologists over a century ago was reintroduced in 1987 for no apparent reason. This has generated chaos out of

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... the stability that had existed for the century preceeding Foissner's publication. It is interesting to note that Corliss put some emphasis on an 'Informationsbericht' of the Bavarian State Office of Water Commerce released in 1991, but this has to be regarded as 'grey literature' for taxonomic purposes and should probably not be cited as a scientific publication because it is not generally available as a book or journal issue. A part of this work has been published in English in the journal Freshwater Biology, but this part does not relate to the case discussed here. In addition to the above, it could be suggested that Fromentel's name Strombidion caudatuin should itself be rejected for this taxon under the Principle of Priority. As Petz & Foissner themselves pointed out, the name Trichoda cometa Miiller, 1773, was recorded by Dingfelder (1962, p. 606) as a senior synonym of Fromentel's name and used as valid. Although Petz & Foissner (1992, p. 160) said that this synonymy was "uncertain", they listed the possible synonymy of Trichoda homha Miiller, 1773 and Trichoda trochus Miiller, 1786, but added that "these three poorly described ciliates are best considered nomina dubia'. If priority is to be the main ground for establishing validity, it could be argued that the earliest one of these names should be chosen. They are names that were 'overlooked' for the same reason that Fromentel's name was not accepted by Kahl (1932) -the description was too poor to permit the ciliate to be recognized unequivocally. With so many old names to chose from, the amount of instability that can be introduced into the scientific literature is almost limitless. I urge that the suppression of Stronihidion caudatuin Fromentel, 1876 as proposed in my application should be approved, with the conservation of the established usage oi Strobilidium gyrans (Stokes. 1887).