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of suspicion. Is there any reason why the first name: that is 
given to a plant or animal should not always be its name as well 
as in the case of a human being? It is true that there is this dif- 
ference, that the poor plant or animal has no choice at any time, 
while the child after it becomes a man or woman might have 
something to say if an outsider should attempt to impose a differ- 
ent name. Still it does not seem that the principle is fundament- 
ally changed by this circumstance. If a lost child were to be 
found and named and brought up by the finder, and he should 
afterwards learn who his parents were and what his name was, he 
would very likely insist on being called by that first name. I re- 
member that one of my boyhood playmates was called ‘ Ed. 
Wheelock,’ but even when I knew him he was aware that Whee- 
lock was not his name, but that of the person who had adopted him, 
and afterward, having lost him for many years from view, on meet- 
ing him again, it was Mr. Edgar Currier with whom I had to do. 
Now it seems to me that all we are trying to do is to find out 
what the name of a plant is. It has happened in so many cases 
that plants have strayed, as it were, from home, been lost, adopted 
by strange persons, and given different names, lost for a time 
again and again found and renamed, and so on, that for us who 
now know them it is an exceedingly difficult matter to trace their 
history back and find out who they are. All this is due to the 
well known vicissitudes of all modern branches of natural history, 
especially of botany. In this general search for the true parentage 
and the true names of plants there should certainly be no differ- 
ence of opinion on the main question and all should admit that 
what is wanted is to ascertain the real name, for all synonyms are 
simply aliases, and the only real name is the first name. 
Nothing can certainly be more confusing than the existence of 
a large number of different names for the same thing, and it is no 
wonder that a movement was set on foot near the beginning of the 
present century, to endeavor to trace up the true history and find 
the true names of plants. It is a significant fact that this move- 
ment was initiated by a botanist, the great Augustin Pyrame de 
Candolle, in 1813, in his “ Théorie élémentaire de la botanique,” 
from which I translate ihe following paragraphs : 
Page 228: “In order that a nomenclature become universal it 
