172 A Note on Nomenclature. [ZOE 
dealing with matters not sufficiently understood. The classification 
of plants is in that work spread out in tabular form over two great 
folio pages ; in these two pages there are under the mark ‘‘}+ Nova 
genera a me constituta”’ twenty-five genera without any mark or 
reference or means of diagnosis other than that afforded by “ Tri- 
andra monogynia,’’ etc., and ten times as many with no mark 
whatever beyond the bare word. 
A second of his amusing “ pronouncements” is the following: 
“ Watsonamra has few if any chances of perpetuity, the genus of 
palms, Sevenoa, apparently precluding it; for never yet has it been 
admitted that two generic names may stand in honor of the same 
man.’’ We commend these remarks to our friends the mycologists 
in the light of, say ‘‘ Saccardia,’’ ‘‘ Saccardinula,’”’ “ Saccardoella,”’ 
etc. Perhaps when Professor Greene and his vagaries have. been 
forgotten some botanist, equally desirous of notoriety, may be en- 
abled to coin a generic name or two by discovering that ‘ Greenel- 
Ja” and ‘‘Greenina’’ are merely synonyms of “Chlora’’ and 
‘* Chlorzea.”’ 
A NOTE ON NOMENCLATURE.* 
BY ALPHONSE DECANDOLLE. 
Many botanists are alarmed by the changes in the generic names 
of plants proposed by Kuntze. But the researches which have been 
made, and the opinions which are daily published on the subject of 
nomenclature, may, however, give some reassurance. 
I have had the curiosity to ascertain what generic names Kuntze 
claims should be changed in the twenty-six families which I have 
been studying, either for the Prodromus or the first volume of our 
Monographie, and their number is twenty-eight. Now, after an 
attentive consideration of the reasons given by Kuntze, only six 
names are found which require to be changed by the application of 
the well-known law of priority, while twenty-two of the changes are 
inadmissible. 
Dr. Briquet, who is better acquainted with the family of the 
Labiates than any other person, has found that of the fifteen changes 
proposed by Kuntze, only five are justifiable, while ten are not ad- 
missible. 
* Translated for Zoe from Journal of Botany, May, 1892, by C. C. P. 
