72 MR. G. C. DRUCE ON THE 
but .4. maritima has an equally narrow-leaved form ; while Bab- 
ington’s A. pubigera from Southern England (which is said not to 
be identical with Boissier’s plant similarly named) is put under 
A. maritima. Boissier’s A. pubigera, it will be remembered, has 
a variety scotica from the Isle of Staffa; but I cannot see that 
either Boissier’s or Babington’s pubigera is specifically distinct 
from A. maritima. The British plants named pubigera differ 
chiefly in the shorter leaves, which form therefore more compact 
tufts. 
A few words may be given to the nomenclature of the Thrifts 
and the Sea-Lavenders. To those who follow the law of priority 
for genera as well as species, the present arrangement adopted in 
our text-books must be unsatisfactory, and especially so to 
those who choose the date 1753 as the starting-point for the 
citation of both genera and species. Tournefort in his ‘Institu- 
tiones’ properly defined these two genera, which are well ditferen- 
tiated not only by their habit, but by their morphological 
characters, giving the name Statice to the Thrifts and Limonium 
to the Sea-Lavenders ; but, unfortunately, Linnzeus, in the first 
edition of the ‘Species Plantarum,’ united them into the one 
genus Statice, the first and only Thrift being the first species, 
which he calls Statice Armeria. This Linnean species is, how- 
ever, an aggregate one; and from examination of the Linnean 
Herbarium I can say that the specimen there is not our British 
plant, but the species named by Koch Armeria elongata and by 
Willdenow A. vulgaris, and referred to by Linnzus in the first 
and second editions of the ‘Flora Suecica.’ The remaining species 
of Statice in the ‘Species Plantarum’ are all Sea-Lavenders. In 
1809 Willdenow, in the ‘Enumeratio plantarum Horti Regi 
Botanici Berolinensis,’ separated the Thrifts from the Sea- 
Lavenders and called them Armeria, a name which had been 
used by Linneus in the first edition of the ‘Systema’ of 1735; but 
the synonym of Lychnidea, quoted by Linnzus from Dillenius, 
Kuntze (in opposition to the view of the ‘Index Kewensis’) 
identifies with the Linnean genus Phlox, and in the 2nd vol. 
p. 482 of the ‘ Revisio Generum Plantarum,’ where he takes 1735 
as the starting-point for generic citation, he replaces the name 
of the Polemoniaceous genus Phlox by that of Armeria, and 
substitutes Willdenow’s Armeria by that of Statice. Boissier, 
unfortunately, in the ‘Prodromus’ followed Willdenow in 
reversing the names given by Tournefort for these genera, 38 
