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CLXXXIII 
Februar 1892: The Botanical Gazette page 60—62: 
Editorial. An International Congress of Botanists is an exceedingly valuable thing, 
provided it is really what the name implies. If, however, the real botanists, whom we would 
delight to honor, stay at home, and we have let loose upon us a erowd of quasi-botanists, 
sueh a elass as is more apt to journey far tocongresses than any other, our lines will not have 
fallen to us in pleasant places. The men we want to visit us are busy, very busy, and are 
little given to take such long trips for manifestly cosmetie purposes. It would be a phe- 
nomenal thing to secure even a fair representation of the realbotauists of Europe. There will 
be great danger, a danger seen lurking around even so eonservative a body as our Aumerican 
Association, of confounding a foreign label with one of distinetion. The percentage of smat- 
terers and eranks is probably as large in other countries as in the United States, and it is 
well known that such classes travel further and talk more profusely than any other. We will 
have to show our good judgment, therefore, not in indiseriminate but in proper recognition. 
Nothing would so arouse the active interest of American botanists in this venture as an 
announcement by the local committee that has the affair in charge, of the names of distingui- 
shed foreign botanists who have signified their intention of being present. American botanists 
will enthusiastically entertain their foreign brethren, and along with the grain will endure a 
reasonable amount of chaff;, but they eannot be expected to endure all chaff, It is not to be 
expected that the perfunetory invitations of the committee will secure all the desired attendance. 
These invitations must be supplemented by those urgent private ones sent by acquaintances 
and correspondents, It is the latter kind that really count. "The International Congress will 
probably be a success if every American botanist& will privately urge the attendance of his 
foreign friends, 
If the Congress becomes really representative, its discussions will carry great weight; and 
any of its decisions with reference to modes of procedure will probably be recognized. If, how- 
ever, it proves to be a body whose representative character may well be called in question, 
no such decisions should be promulgated. More important than the nomenclature questions, 
whieh, like the poor, we have always with us, are questions of uniform terminology with re- 
ference to plant struetures, a uniformity that is not so much to avoid confusion of names as 
confusion of ideas. This will open a vast field of usefulness to the congress, provided 
always that it is representative, which is to say competent. 
Open Lettres. Suggested by Kuntze's *Revisio Generum Plantarum". In recent 
years many changes of well established names have been made solely to satisfy the law of 
priority, and not owing to any difference in judgment as to generie or specific rank. In some 
instances this has been carried so far as to abandon long established and household words 
for names wholly unknown and often inappropriate, because the latter were published a year 
earlier, or even not any earlier, but simply on the preceding page of the same book, or still 
logically, say, in the preceding paragraph or line. 
When we have objeeted to calling Nymphaea Castalia, or Carya Hicoría, or Magnolia 
grandiflora M. foetida, our mouths have been stopped by the law of priority, and our ruffled 
tempers have been smoothed by the assurance that all of these vexatious changes were 7n the 
line of stability, that it would take only a few years to get accustomed to calling Jones Brown 
and Smith Thompson, and after the first little inconvenience and strangeness all would settle 
down into blissful permanency. The mild suggestion that, owing to the different judgments of 
men and the zeal of future antiquarians we might be simply opening the floodgates to an 
increased instability, has generally been received by the innovators with bland incredulity. 
But, to show how the thing really works, now comes along Kuntze with his tremendous Ze- 
visio Generum Plantarum, and finds it necessary to make 30,000 changes in specifie names 
before he ean publish his description of species collected in a journey round the world! Alas, 
in obedience to the new dietum, or dictator, for he speaks ex cathedra, we must no longer 
eall Jones Brown, and Smith Thompson, but must hereafter call Jones Daker, and Smith 
Jenkins. By the irony of fate, we are shown very clearly just how much stability some of 
the more recent and distressing changes are likely to have. E. g, Nyuphaea becomes Leu- 
conymphaea (1737) and Castalia is no more. In the same way Carya becomes Scoria (1808) 
and Hieoria is shelved. Corydalis becomes Capnodes; Dieentra, Capnorchis; Glaucium, Mosen- 
thina; Lepidium, Nasturtium ; Claytonia, Calandria; lonidium, Caleeolaria, and Caleeolaria 
something else ; Elatine, Potamopithys ; Oxalis, Acetosella ; Pelargonium, Geraniospermum ; Rhus, 
Toxieodendron, and so on ad desperandum. Even names which have stood more than 150 
years, like Liriodendron Tulipifera and Zea Mays have to be converted into Tulipifera Lirio- 
dendron and Thalisia Mays to satisfy the ghost of some dead botanist, and the zeal of a live 
antiquarian. 
Old debts become outlawed after a time, and it would simplify matters greatly to apply 
the same practice to old names. There seems almost no end to the changes a persistent rum- 
