230 



The Nomenclature Question and How to Settle It. 



Something like a century and a half ago a pretty little erica- 

 ceous plant fell into the hands of an illustrious Swedish natural- 

 ist, who christened it, after a more or less cursory examination, 

 Pyrola uniflora. Some time later an acute English botanist, 

 discovering in this same plant certain peculiarities of structure, 

 erected it into the new genus MoneseSy and, ignoring altogether 

 the earlier name, styled it Moneses grandiflora. After a further 

 lapse of time, the same little plant, with its two entirely distinct 

 names, came successively before two prominent American scien- 

 tists for a decision as to its nomenclature. One of these, Alphonso 

 Wood, adopted the later name in its entirety. The other, Asa 

 Gray, did not Accepting Mo7ieses as a good genus, he deliber- 

 ately ''increased the number of synonyms" and ''added to the 

 perplexities of students" by compounding a new appellation 

 from Salisbury's generic name and the original specific name of 

 Linnaeus, and Moneses uniflora^ Gray, is now the ordinarily ac- 

 cepted designation of the plant. 



In this case, whatever the secret reason that actually influ- 

 enced him, our great leader yielded exact obedience to that law 

 of priority in nomenclature which certain ardent and industrious 

 spirits are now seeking to apply and enforce throughout the do- 

 main of American botany. . Their primary object is to attain, as 

 closely as possible, that great desideratum, a fixed nomenclature; 

 and, secondarily, they are intent upon doing strict justice, in the 

 case of every North American plant, to the man who first gave 

 it a published name accompanied by an adequate description. 



Taking any common binomial (they argue) it is plainly the 

 second, or specific half, that belongs to the plant individually. 

 Except in monotypic genera, the first half is shared equally with 

 an indefinite number of other plants. Moreover, the first, or 

 generic half of the name, is subject, in a constantly increasing 

 multitude of cases, to changres that can not be resfulated or con- 



trolled in any way. Ingenious botanists have species at their 

 mercy, and are free to combine, separate and re-combine, and to 

 christen the successive groups very much at their own sweet will. 

 No conceivable law can govern the chaos of genera, for a genus 

 is not so much a reality as it is a botanist s idea. A species, 



