T 
CC hec AC e Ue rto ran 
CLXIX 
about the plant, know it by the old name. | learning as Kew. I can not even briefly ans- 
Yet, forsooth, we are asked to sacrifice every- 
thing that belongs to the present for the sake 
of a ''prineiple" that involves endless con- 
fusion, and feeds the vanity of the living more 
than it honours the dead. Of course priority 
in eurrent work is a totally different thing; 
but if it had been the intention of the pro- 
moters of the new *Index to Plant Names", 
on whieh Mr. Daydon Jaekson and his assi- 
stants have been engaged for some ten years, 
to restore these old generie names, and enu- 
merate the species thereunder, it would now 
be necessary to cite some 30,000 of them as 
the eombinations of O. K. (Dr. Kuntze). It 
is no disparagement to the literary researches 
of Dr. Kuntze to say that Mr. Jackson was 
in a position to do this infinitely better than 
Kuntze, if it had been desirable to do it. Dut 
it was never a part of the plan that the com- 
piler should reduce synonymy, and amend tho 
nomenclature of plants. His task has been 
to prepare an index, and as such its value 
will far exeeed any attempts at finality in 
synonymy. 'To have proceeded on the lines 
of Steudel would have only resulted in the 
addition of many thousands of names devoid 
of all authority. Nevertheless, Dr. Kuntze, 
being so impressed with the importance of his 
precious names, declares that the index will 
have no scientifie value unless it include the 
30,000 specifie names appropriated by *'*O. 
K." without more labour than a mere 
transfer?) Dr. Kuntze worked at Kew 
for several years, and enjoyed the usual pri- 
vileges of the establishment, and the excep- 
tional privilege of consulting the index in 
question; and he now very magnanimously 
dedicates a genus to the compiler, and patro- 
?) Mr. Hemsley underrates that work 
of nomenclature, in which he has no 
experience; for hetakes always the ,,most 
convenient names, as he said once 
frivolously to me. Other botanists 
judge otherwise thereon; for instance 
the editors of The Botanical Gazette 
wrote: *It is vastly easier as a rule to 
determine and describe a new species 
than to settle on the oldest proper 
name of a plant 'The Kew botanists 
neglected the time-killing researches of 
priority and could spare thereby most 
of their time to describe more genera 
and new species. Most of other criticisers, 
even opponents acknowledged the enor- 
mous labour I have spent in my 
work. 
wer Mr. Hemsley at this point without ad- 
verting to another very distinctly marked 
epoch, and a very great one too, in the 
history of plant naming. It is an era of less 
than fifty years! duration, but it is absolutely 
the only period in the history of plant naming 
in whieh matters proceeded with anything 
like smoothness. I refer to the splendid epoch 
whieh opened with 'Tournefort in 1694 and 
closed with Linnaeus in 1735. It was an era 
which gave great things and great names to 
botanieal science; first of all, a method of 
defining, delimiting and naturally arranging 
genera; and it was a time when botany at- 
traeted to itself the learning and the mental 
aeumen of the ablest men of the day. Botani- 
eal exploration went on at a good rate both 
at home and abroad, and both new and elab- 
orate local floras, and volumes of new genera 
and new species were put forth in rapid sue- 
cession by men like Ray, Tournefort, Plumier, 
Vaillant, Dillenius, Boerhaave, Micheli, Haller, 
and many men of less note, though of sound 
learning and much force. These represent a 
time when men, partieularly scholars, had a 
lively sense of justice, botanists universally 
respected the law of priority in nomenclature, 
and kept the law serupulously. "This was a 
period concerning which no man could write 
what Mr. Hemsley writes of the Linnaean 
epoch, that *some influential botanists did not 
seruple to ignore the published names of their 
eontemporaries, or alter them upon the most 
trivial grounds; and there was almost uni- 
versal laxity in citing authorities." 
Now I wish to ask if this passage of Mr. 
Hemsley—good enough as descriptive of the 
times of the Linnaean supremacy—-is at aJl 
eongruous with that in which he represents 
matters as proceeding with tolerable smooth- 
ness? In his printed column they are the 
two parts of one sentence. At a time when 
men in the highest botanieal station had no 
literary or scientific moral sense, and being 
themselves of mediocre abilities in many cases, 
made up in part their own deficiencies by 
robbing of their genera and species men of 
talent in humbler station—at such a time our 
friend regards affairs botanical as gliding 
along smoothly enough. 
The history of botany, in what we may 
eall modern times, runs back through full 
four centuries. The happiest, smoothest period 
of its history, and at the same time an active 
and progressive one, was that intervening bet- 
ween the appearing of Tournefort's *Elemens? 
(1694) and Linnaeus' 'Systema? (1735). "The 
most disturbed and contentious of all epochs 
— one not yet very near its end, we fear— 
was that inaugurated by Linnaeus. Not one 
harmonious decade has this period known. 
The transition from the Tonnefortian quiet to 
