56 
be furnished to the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 
and to the Botanical Gazette, with the request that they be published 
therein. 
Jos. T. ROTHROCK. 
Thomas Meehan. 
John H. Redfield. 
Botanical Notes. 
w 
Gender of Names of Varieties, — Among other subordinate ques- 
tions in Natural-history nomenclature, it has been asked whether names 
of varieties, like those of species, should conform in gender to the 
genus, or whether they may not as well conform to the word varieias 
and so always be feminine, 
Linnaeus introduced the current practice of numbering varieties 
by the letters of the Greek alphabet, a^ yS, y^ etc. But to some vari- 
eties, evidently to the more important, he gave names. These names, 
when adjectives, were always (so far as we know) made to agree in 
gender with the generic name: ex. gr. 
Viburnum Opulus, (i roseu?n. 
Asparagus officinalis, a maritinms, § altilis. 
Mesembryanthenium ringens, cc caninum, fi feliyinm. 
In our days, named varieties play a more and more important 
part, and all botanists, as a rule, appear to have followed the Linnaean 
model, with now and then a divergence which is readily explained, 
and which may be said to be accidental, such as 
Ripogofium album, var. leptostachya, Benth. 
This is as one writes ** forma albiflora'" ox "var. albiflora,'' a 
white-flowered form or variety. But that this is not the pattern or 
the true construction of varietal names appears at once on reference 
to ordinary cases. Thus, for example, in ''Nasturtium amphibium.f^ 
indivismn, DC Syst./' it is not an undivided variety of the species 
that is meant, but a name which stands in the same grammatical re- 
lation to Nasturtium that amphibium Aot% diXiAlo v^xxl^ N,ampJiibium, 
a indivisa, is obviously wrong. We should say that it makes no dif- 
ference whether the word variety, or its abbreviation var. is expressed 
or understood. When the conditions of the case seem to call for it, 
we should write ''Nasturtium, spec, amphibium,'' and just as L. C. 
Richard (a good model), in Michaux's Flora writes, 
Viburnum dentatum, var, a glabellum, /? semitomentosmn. 
Jihus Toxicodendron, var. cc vulgare, /? quercifolium. 
The editor of the Gardeners' Chronicle\}Az.xc\i 22, p, 373), havnig 
put this kind of question to Mr. Alphonse De Candolle (whom \ve 
should consider the highest living authority upon nomenclatural mat- 
ters), understands him to reply that " the insertion of the abbrevia- 
tion var, for varictas, which is feminine, demands a feminine termin- 
ation; but if the word var, be omitted, then the rule would be for the 
variety to follow the specific name; " n^eaning probably the generic 
name, for in one of the examples given, ^' Thymus SerpyUum, p Pton- 
tanus," it does not follow^ the specific. 
From this point of view, viz., that where the nature of the group 
(in this case, variety) is expressed the adjective name should be fem- 
