310 
must be fixed, and the fixity of that of natural history is founded 
onthis . .. principle . . . that the first one who discovers an 
object, or who records it in the catalogue of science, has the right 
to give it a name, and that this name must be necessarily ac- 
cepted, unless it already belongs to another object or transgresses 
the essential rules of nomenclature.” 
Page 241: “It may be said in general that any name which 
does not involve a contradiction with the plant, and especially 
which does not belong to any other species, is sufficiently good 
to be preserved. The impropriety of a specific name or the pos- 
sibility of finding more suitable ones is not sufficient to authorize 
a change.” 
Page 250, conclusion: “All this scaffolding of botanical 
nomenclature would crumble at its base and inevitably fall if the 
great majority of naturalists did not recognize the principle of 
which I have spoken, viz., the necessity of accepting the name 
given by the discoverer of a plant whenever that name is con- 
formable to the rules. A name cannot be changed because it has 
little meaning ; for on the same principle the second could be sup- 
pressed if a third better one was found, and the third if a fourth 
should present itself, etc.; thenceforward there would be no longer 
any fixity in nomenclature, or rather, there would be no longer 
any scientific nomenclature. The author himself who has first es- 
tablished a name has no more right than any one else to change 
it for the simple cause of impropriety. Priority, on the contrary, 
is a fixed, positive limitation, which admits of nothing arbitrary oF 
partial ; the most ancient name must therefore be always < admitted.” 
De Candolle, it is true, made five exceptions to this universal 
rule, some of which would not now be regarded as valid, such, for 
example, as his exception according to which the name Lunaria 
annua* might be changed because the plant is not an annual; but 
it has not been pretended that de Candolle fully grasped the im- 
portance of the movement, but only that the movement is itself in 
the nature of an evolution to which de Candolle, even that early, 
gave the initial impetus. 
The English mind did not become fully aroused to the subject 
until nearly thirty years later, but the movement in that country 
ET ean 
* This name is accepted in the « Kew Index.” [ED.] 
