IRbodora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 7 November, 1905 No. 83 
THE USE OF ACCENTUAL MARKS IN GRAY'S 
MANUAL. 
EZRA BRAINERD. 
I CANNOT refrain from expressing my amazement at a portion of 
Mr. Pease's article in the September Ruopora. I concur in what he 
says regarding the proper syllable to receive the accent, and am 
ready to try to say Hypericum and PoLyGon’ ATUM. But on page 
160, paragraph marked “2,” he passes outside of the subject indi- 
cated by his title, to speak of “vowel quantities,” and criticises in 
the Gray Manual the use of certain accentual marks that have stood 
unchallenged for nearly fifty years. 
Surely in the instances cited, with the two exceptions of PíckA and 
SAPÍNDUS, accepted as genera only in the last edition,! these marks 
are correctly used in the Manual. The proposed changes are in 
direct violation of long established and well known rules for the Eng- 
lish pronunciation of Latin, and would lead us into ridiculous ped- 
antry. 
Mr. Pease evidently confuses two very different things, vzz.: (1) 
the ancient distinction of vowels as “long” or “short” — referring 
not so much to quality of sound as to /ength of time in uttering the 
sound; and (2) the Ænglish distinction of vowels as “long” or 
“short” — referring to change of guadity, according, for the most 
part, as a vowel ends a syllable or is followed by a consonant in the 
same syllable. Mr. Pease’s erudition has enabled him to point out 
1 Dr. Gray himself in the Garden Botany, 1870, pp. 70 € 312 gives these words 
the correct accentual marks. “ 4egopódum>” in Mr. Pease's list is plainly a mis- 
print for Aegopodium. 
