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must eventually be followed by all who deal in taxonomy, if con- 
sistency is to be maintained. : 
2. There has been a standing confusion of the terms order and 
Jamily, The term “natural order” has a considerable antiquity, but 
has been confined Slargely to the Spermatophytes. While crypto- 
gamic botanists have by no means been uniform in their termino- 
logy, they have in the majority of instances clearly distinguished 
these two group names. In this they have followed the lead of 
the zodlogists, for there would be no opportunity in animal classi- 
fication to confound such distinct group names as the order Car- 
nivora and the Jamily Canidae. And yet the Ranunculaceae have 
been called indiscriminately a natural order (or simply an order) 
andafamily. On account of this general confusion among the plants 
which are popularly the best known, it will be all the more diffi- 
cult for a time to introduce a uniform and consistent system. 
And yet it seems to need no argument to show that there is no 
good reason for perpetuating this confusion in our terminology, 
and the stand taken on this point by the German systematists, and — 
quite consistently carried out in a number of the most elaborate 
floras that have ever appeared in any country, will go far toward 
establishing the correct terminology. 
3. There has also been a tendency to use the term cofort, much 
as we have used the term order in the proposed system. This 
Was introduced by Lindley, and its adoption by Bentham and 
Hooker has had the tendency to fix its use especially in those 
quarters where other emanations from the same source have had 
much weight. As the Spermatophytes are not all of the vegetable 
world and much less not all of the domain of living things, it be- 
comes a question when we broach the matter of uniformity of 
usage as to whether we shall follow a generally established prin- 
ciple or merely a localized usage. Since all zodlogists and 
the great majority of cryptogamists have already established 
the term order to include a group of families, it would seemingly 
be folly to attempt to adopt the term cohort in place of the term 
order. Here priority of use might well. be argued in addition to 
the axiom that a part is not more important than the whole. : 
The adoption of intermediate groups such as sub-classes, sub- 
Orders, sub-families and sub-genera can well be left to monog- 
