MR. G. BENTHAM ON EUPHORBIACE.E. 191 



regret that we see distinguished botanists endeavouring to com- 

 bine rejected with adopted names by the obviously false nomen- 

 clature exemplified in Mathiola tristis, Linn. 



The rule that long-established custom amounts to prescription, 

 and may justify the maintenance of names which form exceptions 

 to those laws which should be strictly adhered to in naming new 

 plants, is unfortunately now frequently ignored ; and the changes 

 proposed in universally admitted names is producing in many in- 

 stances the greatest confusion. The law of priority is an excel- 

 lent one ; and where a genus or species has been well defined by 

 an early botanist in a generally accessible work, but has subse- 

 quently been neglected and the plant become known under other 

 names, it is well that the original one should be restored. Thus 

 in Laurineae, the genus Litsea was very well characterized by 

 Lamarck on a single species, and afterwards extended to five 

 species in an excellent paper by the elder Jussieu in the 'Annales 

 du Museum,' which every monographist of the Order ought to 

 have studied, but which was entirely neglected by Nees, and sub- 

 sequently by Meissner, who, in the 'Prodromus,' followed Nees 

 lar too closely. Of seven names successively given to the genus, 

 most of them founded on Lamarck's typical species, Nees chose 

 Jacquin's Tetranthera, the most recent of all; the first one of the 

 seven, Glabraria, Linn., was too vaguely and incorrectly charac- 

 terized for identification ; the second, Tomex, Thunb., was a pre- 

 occupied name ; but there was no reason whatever for suppressing 

 the third, Lamarck's Litsea, as extended by Jussieu, still less for 

 transferring the latter name to a genus founded on one of Jus- 

 sieu' s species, but not his typical ones, and therefore not Litsea, 

 Juss., as quoted by Nees. So, again, Ocotea of Aublet, whose 

 mistake as to the fruit was corrected and the genus well charac- 

 terized by Jussieu, should never have been replaced by the much 

 later name Oreodaphne of Nees. In these cases one cannot refuse 

 to restore the original names of Lamarck and Aublet. Oil the 

 other hand, it creates nothing but confusion to suppress a generic 

 Dame, well characterized and universally adopted by long custom, 

 ln ^vour of a long-forgotten one, vaguely designated in an 

 obscure work, out of the reach of the great majority of botanists. 

 At has been proposed, for instance, to replace the well-known 

 Lhrozophoraof Necker and Adrien de Jussieu by Tournesolia of 

 ocopoli, said to have been published in his ' Introduction,' a work 



be found only in a very few continental libraries, not to mr 



