ATASITES AND THYRSANTHEMA. 155 
how men like to assume the exercise of it is well exemplified in 
the action of the makers of the Kew Index. Mr. Bentham had 
years before suggested that probably Zhyrsanthema was the same 
as Chaptalia; but he doubted. In the Index the Benthamian 
query is omitted, and the Neckerian genus is put down as posi- 
tively the same as Chaptalia; this, too, as I shali venture to 
guess, without so much as a glance at the pages of Necker. 
Otto Kuntze had also tried to show that Bentham’s doubts were 
groundless, and that Chap/alia must positively be reckoned a 
mere synonym of TZhyrsanthema. But American botanists 
ought to have learned by experience before now, Mr. Kuntze’s 
liability to err—and that by sheer superficiality of examination 
—in his interpretation of Necker. Shall I point out some 
instances of our having changed long lines of names according 
to his dictates, and afterwards found ourselves obliged to 
change them all back again ? 
For my part, I am sure I shall in no quarter be accused of 
any bias against strict priority. If Zhyrsanthema of 1790 is ` 
- the same as Chaptalia of 1800, with me the former stands, even 
though with no one else. 
Let us open Necker’s volume at pages 6 and 7, both occupied 
by his four segregates of the Linnaean Tussilago.. Two of the 
segregates, Petasites and Tussilago are old genera well estab- 
lished long before Linnaeus. Necker simply restores them, with 
the names that belong to them by right of priority. His new 
genera are Zhyrsanthema and Atasites. The later furnishes a 
luminous illustration of superficial slip-shod and bungling 
methods of “authority ” in disposing of Neckerian genera, I 
think everybody who has ventured a say about it has said that 
Atasites and Gerbera are identical; and yet Gerbera with Lin- 
naeus was an Arnica species. Necker says twice over on the 
same page that Asasifes is based on some Linnaean 7; usstlago, 
while in one place only on the page, he intimates that Arnica 
Gerbera may be included in Aéasites. That is very different 
from ‘making it the type species of the genus. N ow what A/asites 
may be, I need not know. I only see that, according to Necker’s | 
