MR. G. BENTHAM ON EUPHORBTACE2E. 193 



of dioecious ones). The name Echinus is also to a certain degree 

 defective, as being so very well known in the animal kingdom. lb 

 is true that, as urged by Baillon, a name having been already used 

 in zoology is not a reason for changing it in botany ; but the 

 choice of such names should be avoided (Rules, art. 28 (10)), 

 especially when they are truly classical names of animals, such 

 as Elephas or Echinus. 



The greater number of decker's genera have been so imper- 

 fectly characterized with so absurd a terminology that they are 

 quite indeterminable ; and his names deserve to be absolutely 

 ignored, except in the very few cases where Jussieu or other early 

 French botanists have succeeded in identifying them, and cor- 

 rected their characters ; but even then it is doubtful whether these 

 names should not bear the date of the correction rather than 

 that of the original work. Adanson's ' Families,' With all the 

 inconveniences of its form and absurd orthography, is much more 

 scientific, and many of his genera are well defined and have therefore 

 been properly adopted ; but still there are others far too vaguely 

 described to w r arrant their being revived so as to replace generally 

 adopted ones of a more recent date, as has been proposed, for 

 instance, in the case of Sporobolus of Brown, which some botanists 

 have replaced by the very uncertain Vilfa of Adanson (see Benth. 



FL Austral, vi. 620). 



We have made it a rule in our ' Genera Plantarum ' to yield 

 no right of priority to ante-Linnean names, i. e. those published 

 before the adoption of the Linnean system of nomenclature. If 

 once w r e give this right to Tournefort or Eumphius, there is no 

 reason for not going back to Bauhin or Clusius, or even to Pliny 

 or Dioscorides, to the utter confusion of all synonymy. Linnaeus, 

 by the establishment of the binomial nomenclature, made an 

 epoch in the study of systematic botany ; and it is by far the 

 most conducive to the facility of that study (the great object 

 of nomenclature) to give up all search after previous names, and 

 take all genera as adopted by him or satisfactorily modified by 

 subsequent botanists. We therefore cannot, for instance, give 

 Patrick Browne the precedence over Linnaeus in the case oiAdelia, 

 as proposed by Mueller. Browne's first edition was ante-Lin- 

 nean. He there gave the name of Adelia, not to a genus, but to 

 a plant which afterwards entered into the genus to which Mi- 

 chaux gave the name of Adelia, but only after this name had been 

 appropriated by Linnaeus to a different genus; and I can see no 



