258 
were classical names which had been applied to the plants by 
ancient authors. From Goodenough’s spirited letter, emphatic 
in its expression of personal dislike of Salisbury as it is full of 
zeal for the honor of Grecian gods and goddesses, I must give a 
few passages. ‘I am glad now, as I have been at all times here- 
tofore, to receive communications of your literary difficulties.” 
(Sir James had been obliged to ask of him the gender of his pro- 
posed name Blephara.) “Much as I wish for peace and forbear- 
ance, and condescension to men of low estate [and in point of 
scholarship thus must I style Salisbury—of very low estate], I 
must hold up both my hands against allowing Salisbury to dese- 
crate the name Castalia. To make the name of the nymph of the 
fountain where Apollo and all the Muses drank the purest lymph, 
serve for the denomination of a plant inhabiting foul, stagnating, 
fetid water, and that, too, in a Flora Greca, which is to preserve 
the memorial of all Grecian excellence in the natural world, will 
be an offense of the grossest sort: Religto vetuit. A bad name, 
Linnzus says, had better be retained than that a change should 
be made. But really there is reason in roasting of eggs. You 
cannot be bound down to a name that is execrable, and which 
must excite in all minds ideas of execration.” 
One can hardly fail to observe that, in the heat of feeling, 
the Bishop became a little inconsistent with himself; for in the 
beginning of his diatribe he holds Castalia a sacred name which 
Salisbury must not be allowed to desecrate, and concludes by pro- 
nouncing it execrable. ‘But these are trivialities and do not 
gravely concern us. The principle now contended for along all 
popular lines of reform in nomenclature is this: that the oldest 
Linnzan or post-Linnzan names are those which genera must 
bear; and it is quite beyond all successful contradiction that Cas- 
talia of Salisbury is the oldest name, not pre-Linnzan, for the 
genus which men are still calling Mymphea. 
Note on the Color of Caulophyllum thalictroides. 
Having seen Mr. Aug. F. Foerste’s Morphological Note on 
Caulophyllum thalictroides in the July BULLETIN, I should like 
to call attention to the color of the plant as it grows on Mount 
: Royal, Montreal. When it first comes up there in the spring, its 
