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matter seems to be of small importance; for in truth the distinc- 
tion between a fruit and a seed is not in all cases so easily drawn 
as the authors make it. In the process of name-making the 
two have often been confounded, and perhaps not always out of 
carelessness; sometimes, doubtless, purposely, and because it is 
a question of noimportance. Illustrations of this are found in our 
most scholarly books of systematic botany. It was hardly in 
carelessness that Dr. Gray named a Bidens heterosperma, or, still 
more recently, a Bigelovia leiosperma, although what each of these 
names describes is a character of the carfos, rather than sperma. 
No authors complain of them, or any other such names or think 
of forcing them to give place to new ones more exactly framed, 
and all these are precisely analogous to the case made the subject 
of this note. The worst criticism which the most refined sense 
of accuracy could pass on such a name would appear to be that 
of placing it under the old dictum, fiert non debet, factum valet. 
Amarantus leucocarpus is an entirely valid name, and as such 
rejoices in a dozen years of priority over the more nicely com- 
pounded new one. It has been the common property of the 
botanical world during these years, and the botanical public may 
not feel disposed to give it up; rather, may think it ought not to 
be given up. There have been in times past a few advocates of 
the principle that authorship of a botanical name is naturally 
invested with certain peculiar privileges of altering, recalling and 
replacing—a principle of which the disastrous results upon the 
literature of science, by inviting to an excessive multiplication of 
synonyms, are easily foreseen; and there is probably no author 
now living who would contend for any special rights of this kind. 
A name, if it be in one view so much the author’s property that 
others must respect and use it, is also public property from the 
_ date of its publication, and he who attempts to recall a name 
should bear in mind that he has a public consent and approval to 
gain or lose; that whether he lose or gain his point with the 
public, he has made a synonym, and that, under the continually 
strengthening and prevailing conviction of the need of paying all 
respect to priority, it is most likely, indeed altogether inevitable, 
that the newer and more accurate name will be the one to take 
a useless place among the synonyms, ; 
