228 
Annotations. 
By ASA GRAY. 
NELUMBO LUTEA. Pers. Syn., i. 92 (1807). This is proba- 
bly the first appearance of the name in this form. Persoon him- 
self cites Willd. (sub Ne/wmbio); but the difference in orthogra- 
phy, although affecting only the termination and the gender, is 
rather too much for that mode of citation. It would have been 
remarkable if the name had not appeared in this form until the 
year 1872, as Professor Greene supposed. Tournefort is, of 
course, the authority for the genus. That Jussieu should have 
changed the termination of the word, and that De Candolle 
should have followed him in what is politely called a “ Candollean 
mistake,” was in those days most natural and excusable, though 
surely unnecessary.* That Bentham and Hooker, in the new 
Genera Plantarum, should have gone back only to Jussieu, was in 
accordance with the plan of that work, which was to start with 
Linneus.t As I have followed the more ordinary course and, 
with Linnzus, recognized Tournefort as the scientific founder of 
genera, I have adhered to the original form Me/wmbo in the 
manuscript of the Synoptical Flora. 
NEMACAULIS, as fo specific nomenclature. Professor Edward 
L. Greene, in the October number, is certainly “a fearless cri- 
tic,” and in that capacity he attributes to (of all men) the late 
Mr. Bentham “a bit of scientific iniquity which has been adopted 
and made his own by each American author who has, since 
Bentham’s time, handled the Zriogonee,’—that is the venerated 
‘Dr. Torrey, myself and Dr. Watson. As those of us who still sur- 
vive are not likely, after this, to take notice of such state- 
ments, it may be well to consider for a moment what this iniqui- 
tous proceeding is. When Nuttall established the genus Vema- 
* If Linnzeus had not been ‘affected by a singular blindness to generic charac- 
ters in plants ’’ (!) the form Ve/umbium might have come in earlier and with his sanc- 
tion. 
+ The reasons for this, although to me unconvincing, have no little force. But 
their plan should unquestionably be adopted if the alternative course is to attribute 
scientific genera to ante-Tournefortian and herbalistic botanists after the unhappy 
example recently set by so good a man as Baron Miiller. But I continue to think that 
there is a logical and very practicable 7uste milieu which has, indeed, generally been 
