BULLETIN 
TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB. 
moh Calaks New York, Neperber:4, 1887. _ INo, i. 
Bibliographical N Notes on well known Plants.—V. 
By EDWARD L. GREENE. 
GLEDITSCHIA AQUATICA, Marshall, Arb. Am. 54 (1785). 
Gleditschia Carolinensis, La Marck, Encycl. ii. 465 (1786). 
Gleditschia monosperma, Walter, F1. Carol. 254 (1788). 
It has been only within a few years that American botanists, 
following the slow lead of the British, have begun to acknowledge, 
__ what numerous and very eminent continental authorities always 
-— insisted upon—namely, the necessity of adopting the oldest 
specific names of plants; relegating to synonymy every later one, 
no matter how much more appropriate. They who go no further 
at present, admit this, that the earliest name given toa species 
under its proper genus is the one which ought to be used, in 
preference to any more recent one, which may be more fit or 
accurate. The wild license indulged in by botanists of the early 
part of the current century, more especially the British, in the 
coinage of new names for plants that had old names enough, 
threatened to make the newly adopted binomial nomenclature a 
curse to science rather than a blessing—hence the necessity, 
which the wisest early foresaw, of placing a check upon this rage 
for the improvement of specific names; for the faultiness of the 
old was usually the excuse for proposing a new one. The 
perfectly natural principle by which to bridle the vanity of the 
makers of new names is that of priority; and this principle also 
carries with it a strong point of justice to the authors, who are 
always admitted to have something like a legal right invested in 
- the name of a new species. 
That we in America are slow to join in this wholesome and 
even necessary reform movement, now active everywhere else, is 
instanced in the case of this southern species of honey locust; for 
in all the books, even down to Watson’s Index, published in 1878, ee 
