137 
the year 1620; and the binary name which he gave it was Cam- 
panula serpillifolia. 
We have all, in our earlier days, been gravely told by learned 
instructors that before Linnzeus there was no such thing asa 
binomial nomenclature; that the earlier writers gave to each 
species a descriptive phrase, short or long, which served the 
double purpose of a name and a definition of the species. There 
was a good deal of truth in that statement, and nearly as much 
falsity in it, too. Bauhin’s works, no less than those of his con- 
temporaries, and even of authors a century earlier, fairly abound 
in these double names, followed by full and often very accurate 
specific characters. Very numerous, indeed, are the binary names 
now in use, and credited to Linnzus, which were in honest truth 
given to those species by even Bock or by Dodoens two hun- 
dred years before the splendid appearing of that Northern Light. 
So in the case of the earliest publication of the plant before us. 
Bauhin’s scholarly page is headed by a very tolerable wood-cut 
representing it entire, from root to flower. Then comes the name 
Campanula serpillifolia, followed by a complete description in 
some fifteen lines, or, to be precise, of ninety-seven Latin words; 
then, just as any careful and appreciative author of a new species 
in our own time would do, he tells all he knows concerning its 
habitat: *‘ A branch of this plant I had first from my brother ; * 
afterwards we collected it in flower on Monte Baldo; then M. 
Paschal, the Frenchman, obtained it growing on rocks in the - 
Tyrol.” Nor does he conclude this charming account without 
appending a final paragraph, evidently relating to some different 
plant, but which, for its curiosity, I cannot forbear translating 
here: “ A similar plant, with leaves whitish beneath and pale 
green above, native of the island of Toupinambo, in Brazil, Bur- . 
serus has communicated to me.” 
So much for the original discovery, naming and publishing 
of one of the loveliest plants of the northern hemisphere; and 
under this name the plant was taken up by a number of Bauhin’s 
botanical successors; for example: Ray (1686), Tournefort 
(1700), Scheuchzer (1703); but there was not a universal con- 
sensus of opinion that it had been correctly referred to the genus 
* The celebrated Johann Bauhin, no doubt. 
