CLX VIII 
*Much has been done, however, for the | 
| by him on matters of nomenclature are both 
elucidation of the order in local Floras. Al- 
ready at the close of the last century and the 
into general cireulation, and were overlooked 
by Beauvois, Persoon, Willdenow, and other | 
systematists. Several of the same genera have 
since been re established, but under other 
names which have now been so long and so 
universally adopted, that they must be con- 
sidered as having acquired a right of pre- 
scription to overrule the strict laws of prio- 
rity. It would indeed be mere pedantry, 
highly inconvenient to botanists, and so far 
detrimental to science, now to substitute 
DBlumenbachia tor Sorghum, Fibichia for Cyno- 
don, Santia for Polypogon, or Sieglingia for 
Triodia.^ 
It is idle to argue that two or three per- 
sons have no right to make laws; for any 
eorporation, however small, has that right, 
and is justified in exercising it if it has the 
power to carry them into effect. But, after 
all, the main question is, whether the Kew | 
botanists aeted in the interest of science in 
declining to be guided by the rules passed 
by another body of botanists; and I think any 
unprejudieed outsider would agree that they 
did, and that the course events have taken 
has strengthened their position. 
It should be remembered that most of 
the advocates of priority, and especially those 
advocates of almost unqualified priority, such 
as Dr. Kuntze, have no responsibility beyond 
literary aeeuracy, and even that cannot be 
maintained for such uneertain quantities as 
orders, genera, and species of plants. On the 
other hand, the botanists of Kew have grave 
responsibilities towards the general publie. It 
is not too much to say that Kew is almost 
exclusively responsible for the botanical nomen- 
clature eurrent in gardens, and in English 
and colonial literature dealing with plants or 
the produets of plants, to say nothing of the 
vast named collections at Kew. The labour 
of renaming the plants in aecordance with 
the investigations of successive reformers would 
have been as nothing to the folly of doing 
$0, though it would have been a hereulean 
task, and a recurring task, as each older 
name was disinterred. "The idea of giving 
à gardener, or a manufaeturer, or any per- 
son interested in vegetable produets, one 
of these resuscitated generie names with à 
specifie name tacked on to it by a person 
who has done nothing else except put his 
initials to it, is too absurd. AI] the litera- 
ture connected with the plant is under another 
name, all the figures likewise, and, one might 
add, all the persons almost who know anything 
eonfident that some of the positions assumed 
excellent and easily defensible; and I am as 
commeneement of the present one, several | confident that at least a very large proportion 
continental botanists proposed new genera for | 
anomalous European grasses; but these were | 
published in works which entered but little | 
of his new combinations, which men have so 
generally reprobated, will have to be accepted 
as the only valid names for the plants desig- 
nated. I am therefore resolved to write a 
number of paragraphs in defense of the work, 
taking up as my line of aetion that of ans- 
wering some of the points made, or thought 
to have been made by some of the reviewers. 
I seem invited to this course by the fact that 
more than one of the crities in Europe have 
taken occasion, under this caption, to animad- 
vert upon some of my own views and methods 
in nomenclature; which was of course quite 
in place, inasmuch as I have sometimes stood 
in representation of principles espoused by 
Dr. Kuntze, and have advocated even a more 
radical treatment than his of the whole sub- 
ject of the scientifie naming of plants. 
It would be impossible, within due limits, 
to go through the entire category of adverse 
comments passed on Dr. Kuntze's work wit- 
hin the last half year; and I am minded to 
take up only a few points in a few ot the 
earlier and more extended reviews. 
Mr. Hemsley begins his paper by a virtual 
denial of the existence of an international code 
such as that upon the authority of which Dr. 
Kuntze believes himself to have been warranted 
in the taking up and carrying on of his work. 
I do not purpose taking up any defense of 
the Laws of the Paris Congress of 1867 as 
of international binding force. Most botanists 
respect these laws as international, and claim 
to be working under the guidance of them 
more or less attentively and serupulously; 
but we are not at this point to find fault 
with the Kew botanists, whom Mr. Hemsley 
represents. Seeing they declined to take part 
in the congress which adopted the Laws of 
Nomenelature, I rather admire the consistency 
with which they adhere to the stand they 
took af the time of the congress. It is small 
folk, not great, who can not afford to be 
consistent. 
In order that his ecritieisms of Dr. Kuntze 
should be intelligible, Mr. Hemsley thought 
it desirable to give *a brief sketch of the 
recent history of plant naming." His attempt 
to sketch such history, from 1753 down to 
the present can hardly be called successful, 
I venture to think. To say that from 1758, 
when the first edition of the Species Plan- 
tarum was published, *down to within the 
last twenty-five or thirty years, matters pro- 
ceeded with tolerable smoothness," is a pro- 
position which, to any one af all conservant 
with the history of the period embraced, will 
seem a surprising one to have been enuncia- 
ted from so celebrated a seat of botanical 
