^ 



i 



r 





I 



? 



NOMENCLATURE OF BAYBERRIES. 39 



lyong after the publication of my book of San Francisco Bay 

 botany, a student of the bayberries and their nomenclature 

 came to me with the taxonomic proposition that the type 

 species of Tournefort's Gale is generically distinct from the 

 real bayberries ; that Gale embraces only the European Myrica 

 Gale of Linnaeus. On examination of the matter, under my 

 fellow botanist's insistence, I am persuaded he is right about 

 it, and so Gale will not hold for either my Calif ornian species 

 or for those of the Atlantic slope ; and w^e — my friend and I 

 must go in quest of a generic name for our bayberry genus. 



Realizing that one of my most daring disciples in the work 

 of restoring natural genera in place of the artificial and com- 

 plex genera of Linnaeus and of Bentham has written a large 

 Flora in which, in my judgment, far better than Linnaean and 

 Benthamian genera are set forth, I first of all consult this new 

 Flora of the Southern United States, to see if this friend has 

 also distinguished generically between the Old World Gale 

 and the New World bayberries. I rejoice in the discovery 

 that the name Myrica is not there at all. I am glad of its dis- 

 appearance from another and an influential book, though I am 

 far from venturing to credit Mr. Small w4th having rejected 

 the name Myrica on those grounds upon which I myself, at 

 an earlier date, had rejected it. 



In this Flora of the Southern States I find a name for the 

 bayberries which to me is brand new, the name MoRELLA, 

 and find it credited to Father Loureiro (l790). At first glance 

 there is revealed in that name a definite hint of mulberries, for 

 Morella, as a Latin w^ord, can not seem to mean anything else 

 but little-mulberry tree ; either that or dwarf mulberry-tree. 

 I understand, of course, the doctrine that no meaning is to be 

 looked for in either the generic or specific term of any binary 

 name of animal or plant. I am not far, I think, from a clear 

 apprehension of how that proposition took its origin. How* 

 ever, that doctrine is not here under discussion. The fact is, 

 that human intelligence, once tolerably well developed, inevi- 

 tably scans the sense of any new name ; looks to see, if possi- 

 ble, its meaning, and asks why the thing obtained that name. 



