202 LEAFLETS. 
generic names—this name-making method, I say, had already 
disfigured nomenclature beyond further endurance on the part 
of the educated. 
Then there was a second easy mode of constructing generic 
names ad libitum; that of taking two distinct names of old 
genera and writing them together as one, to form the title of a 
new genus different from both. Such were Cytisogenista, Lilio- 
narcissus, Narcissoleucojum, and a dozen more of that ilk, all of 
which held their places in all the books, until Linnaeus called 
for their banishment despite their indisputable priority, and they 
were banished. I long since came to regard this expurgation of 
the list of generic names—one made, I repeat, despite priority— 
as his greatest benefaction to botany. 
But there was one possible way of abusing the name-maker’s 
privilege which Linnaeus did not legislate against, and that for 
the reason that there was tben upon record no instance of it; 
nor could he have dreamed that such an abuse would ever have 
an example, so utterly irrational and absurd every thoughtful 
mind must regard it, at least until some one supposed to be sane 
and competent has led the way; for there is no kind of absurdity 
which some one will not approve and practice if but some sup- 
posed authority has given the first example of it. I refer to the 
newly introduced usage of naming two or three different genera 
of plants in honor—dishonor, it should be said—of one and the 
same man, and doing it deliberately. Against this usage no 
legislation or admonition was ever yet directed that I know of. 
Law against it was never enacted or suggested, and for the 
Simple reason that no one would be expected to violate such a 
principle. From the time—now twenty-five centuries past—when 
Eupatorium and Gentiana were dedicated to royal botanists, 
down through all the later centuries of genus-naming, from Con- 
rad Gesner, Matthiolus and Caesalpinus, of the sixteenth century, 
to the middle of the nineteenth, I believe that every instance of a 
botanist’s having a second genus named in his honor was acci- 
dental ; the two names—sometimes three or four, and even five— 
were each made without knowledge of the existence of another; 
and when the facts became known, and the later name must needs 
pass into synonymy, the new and substitute name was not al- 
