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sight into genera, we naturally look first to the matter of the 



number which were founded by him. If he was really an able 

 expositor of generical relations in the plant world we shall 

 expect to see his name appended, as the author of them, to a 

 large number of the genera accepted by the majority of botanjsts 

 to-day. This rational method of giving honor to whom honor is 

 due In systematic biology, was in use In botanical literature be- 

 fore Linnaeus, and he adopted it, although In a partial manner 

 which called forth severe criticism from juster men than he among 

 his contemporaries. But, looking into almost any treatise on the 

 genera of plants for the solution of our question, we are sure of 

 being misdirected from the start, unless forewarned, by the long 



array of familiar generic names which are therein most wrongly 

 credited to him. This is one great incubus of error which has 

 fallen upon our science, historically considered, largely through 



that inordinate zeal which our forefathers had for this great man. 



Let us consult, in evidence, the pages of Bentham and 

 Hooker's celebrated work. The very first order — Ranunculaceae 

 •will illustrate our point well enough. These authors recognize 

 in the order thirty genera. Of these no less than eighteen, or 

 three-fifths of the whole number, are credited to Linnaeus. But, m 

 sober truth, sixteen out of the eighteen genera ascribed to Lin- 

 naeus by Bentham and Hooker had been well defined and named 

 by competent botanists before Linnaeus was born; and all but one 

 of the sixteen bore the same names as now. Linnaeus founded 

 two of the Ranunculaceous genera, and no more ; and one of these 

 two, namely, Cimicifuga, he reduced to Actcsa as early as the 

 year 1753. So that when his work in botany was done there was 

 in this great family of plants one genus, Isopynim, among all those 

 which he recognized as true genera, of which he could say that he 

 had been the founder of it. Over and above hopymni and Ciw- 

 icifuga, which must always in justice be credited to Linnaeus, 

 there remains Actcea, which, at least under that name, is his. But 

 the pre-Linnasan botanists had defined it, and knew it well, 

 though by another name, and one which is neither as polysyllabic 

 nor as ill-sounding as several which have been made and received 

 within the present century, Christophoriana. 



So much for that grave falsity to history, and that injustice to 



