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72 feecent Literature. [ ZOF 
The sooner any botanist of our day divests himself of the idea that 
he is likely to live to see a settled nomenclature, or that the rest of the 
botanical world will allow some fifth-rate authority to attach his ndme 
to the work of all the great men who have preceded him, the sooner 
we shall be able to argue out generic questions without lugging all 
the species in by the ears, and so adding immensely to our syn- 
onymy. 
The reason for such extensive changes without study of the 
species, can only be the belief of an author that his judgment will 
finally settle the nomenclature, and the fact that these wholesale 
transferences are made almost entirely by those who attach the last 
combiner’s name furnishes the strongest proof of the motive. 
Whatever fault may be found with Bentham and Hooker for their 
work in “ Genera Plantarum ”’ they must be commended for their 
modesty, for on the line followed out by Dr. Kuntze they might 
have attached B. & H. to an immense number of species, with no 
greater trouble than that involved in the employment of an ad- 
ditional copyist. 
It should not be forgotten by botanists in haste to settle nomen- 
clature; that there are two questions hanging over systematic 
biology of such importance as to cast Dr. Kuntze’s modest 
contribution to Synonymy entirely into shade. The first of 
these is homonymy as between zoology and botany, a ques- 
“tion which can only be settled by agreement between the great 
body of zoologists and botanists. The second, the limits of genera, 
we may all help to solve. About species there is often a consider- 
able divergence of honest opinion, which time and better knowl- 
edge will be apt to reconcile, but genera should be more easily 
settled. It ought to be possible to make to some extent rules as to 
what should and what should not be taken into consideration, espe- 
cially as long as genera are to a great extent matters of convenience. 
y 
lies as Composite, Caryophyllacez, Acanthacee, etc., in which they 
are now extremely artificial. A little logic injected into systematic 
botany might enable us, for instance, to see that if its various sec- 
tions can be properly included in the genus Quercus, there can be 
no sufficient reason for holding Castanopsis distinct from Castanea 
or Carya from Juglans. The theory that the limits of genera and 
