VOL. III. ] A Note on Nomenclature. 17% 
After these two examinations, made conscientiously, ‘he number 
of the changes proposed by Kuntze must be reduced by two-thirds. 
While rendering, therefore, due justice to the learning and accu- 
racy of this scientist, I am bound to say that there are several sources 
of error in his conclusions. I will call attention to the two most 
important ones: 
(a) Kuntze takes for genera names only apparently generic, and 
which are not accompanied by characters sufficiently descriptive of 
them. A genus is only constituted by the union of a name and the 
distinctive characters of the plant. Without that it is a genus still- 
born. It is zé/, and therefore can produce no result, especially in 
the application of the law of priority. All botanists are agreed 
about zomina nuda or seminuda. 
(4) The starting point for the genera of Linnzus is certainly 
his Genera of 1737, and not his Systema, ed. 1, of 1735. This latter 
had only for its object to make known the twenty-four classes of the 
‘author. Some names of genera are indicated there, but without 
special characters, for the genus is not defined by the single notion 
conveyed by the term Hexandria or Pentandria digynia. It was in 
1737 that Linnzeus enumerated and characterized all the genera he 
was acquainted with, in his Genera, in which he abandoned the 
names of the Systema, regarding them, no doubt, as useless. 
In my Nouvelles Remarques sur la Nomenclature, in 1883, I have 
explained why we should start from the Genera rather than from 
the Systema, and I have seen with pleasure this opinion recently 
sustained by Daydon Jackson (Bot. Journ. February, 1892); 
Botanical Gazette (March, 1892); and Schumann (Naturwiss, Rund- 
schau, Jarhrgang 7, No. 13). The remarks of this latter scientist, 
favorable to our laws of nomenclature of 1867, have a value so much 
the greater because he says: 4x understanding had been arrived at, 
before their publication, with the botanists of Berlin and some foreign 
botanists. : 
The principles which I maintained in 1867 and in 1883 are thus 
supported by good judges, and I confess it is a great satisfaction to 
me in my old age. 
