230 LKAFLETS. 



moti large-leaved plant whose umbels are always several, 

 always lateral and almost subsessile* Moreover, in that old 

 author's full page of description, in which he covers every- 

 thing from root to pods, there is not a syllable that points to 

 the wooly-leaved and spinous-podded A. Syriaca. The man 

 could not have written that description with any specimen of 

 the species last named before him. 



Several generations of botanists, including our many Ameri- 

 cans of the profession, since Decaisne's time, yes, even from 

 lyinnaeus down, have trustingly followed I^innaeus and Decaisne 

 in citing Cornut's figure as a sort of prototype — by all of 



them an unquestioned prototype — of A. Syriaca. One is 



obliged to doubt whether even one of them, after Linnaeus, 

 ever took a look at that old seventeenth-century page and 

 figure to see for himself what it might represent. 



Concerning the two names, A. Syriaca and A, Cornuti, it 

 may not seem to every mind impertinent to ask which one is 

 likely to become the settled one for the species, and perpetual 

 for all coming botanical time ? It is possible that neither one 

 may forever escape universal reduction to the status of sy- 

 nonymy ; for, tempora mutantur. The first of the two prevailed 

 from 1752 to 1844, though rejected by some who would have 

 no geographic botanical names at alL From 1844 until almost 

 1900 r, Cornuti held sway ; for only as late as 1908 did that 

 old standard, Gray's Manual, return to A. Syriaca; so that 

 only within the last five years has that appellation met with 

 what may be called universal adoption among us. Times 

 change, and so do minds. How long the opinion may prevail 

 that names stand by priority, even when false or ridiculous, 

 no one can tell ; but it might easily be that forty years hence, 

 or twice or thrice forty, a distant generation may think as 

 some of the best and boldest individuals between Linnaeus 

 and us have thought, that all false names and foolish ones 

 must be expunged, and better ones substituted for them. In 

 that day both A. Syriaca and A, Cornidi will both go by the 

 board . 



