320 
to the end. Now this is the case with us all in learning the names 
_of our familiar plants. The particular name that we learn for a 
a plant is all that makes it sacred, and the rising generation of 
botanists, who will have only before them the actual first name or 
the real name of the plant, instead of some false synonym that 
occurs in the present books, will look upon that name with the 
same veneration as we did upon the false one, and the names that 
we have learned to cherish will be to them nothing but worthless 
synonyms. In their case this will be true, whereas in ours we 
were simply cherishing the names that did not properly belong to 
the objects to which they were applied. 
I have said that the new movement is not only not revolutionary, 
but is simply in the nature of an evolution which has long been 
going on. On the contrary, it might be maintained that the so- 
called principles embodied in this circular, which are alleged to be 
an expression of conservative views, are really, on the contrary, 
revolutionary in their character. The following are the principal 
codes which have been proposed by responsible organizations for 
the guidance of writers in zodlogy and botany : 
De Candolle’s Théorie élémentaire de la botanique, 1813. 
British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1842. 
Association of American Geologists and Naturalists, 1845. 
International Botanical Congress, Genoa, 1865. 
American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1877- 
Societe Zodlogique Internationale, 1882. 
American Ornithologists’ Union, 1883-85. 
International Botanical Congress, Genoa, 1892. 
Botanical Club, American Association for the Advancement of 
Science, 1892-93. 
The codes adopted by these associations show a steady ad- 
vance from the idea of giving genera and species names to suit 
individual taste toward the idea of giving them strictly their old- 
est names. And the history of nomenclature shows an advance 
in stability and uniformity corresponding exactly with the thor- 
oughness with which these codes have been carried out. The 
_ circular to which reference has been made proposes a new de- 
parture in nomenclature, revolutionary in its character and, judg- 
ing from the history of the science, capable of producing most 
chaotic results. 
