216 
the newer ones. We quote a few sentences, in order to show 
that Mr. Druce is sound on principles of nomenclature: 
« The names adopted for many plants differ from those given 
in the preceding Catalogue; but the change is in almost all cases 
caused by following the only safe guide, z. ¢., the law of priority 
of nomenclature.” 
« Many of the names given in the Catalogue do not follow the 
law of priority. It would be well to carry out this law as far as 
possible.” 
‘In the Catalogue brackets are used to enclose the names of 
some authorities for varietal names. They appear to be used 
when a writer has described as a species a plant to which is now 
given only varietal rank, or when a writer has placed it as a 
variety of a species which then bore a different name from the 
one now employed.” 
“In the preface, as already alluded to, a statement is made that 
pre-Linnaean authorities for genera are not cited. It would have 
been better to have made the statement more precise, and to have 
stated that the date whence the citation, either of species or 
genera, should commence, is the year 1753, when the ‘ Species’ 
Plantarum’ was published—the first work in which the binomial 
system of nomenclature was consistently adopted. As it is, in 
the present Catalogue the names of several authors which are 
cited are, strictly speaking, pre-Linnaean; that is, they published 
the genera to which their names are attached before the issue of 
the ‘Species Plantarum.’ By citing authors before the date 1753 
(and after the first edition of the ‘Genera Plantarum’ in 1737) 4 
host of genera are brought into competition with existing names, 
a danger which it would be well to avoid. Also the date 1753 
received the assent of the late Alphonse de Candolle when the 
writer suggested it to him shortly after the publication of Kuntze’s 
‘Revisio Generum Plantarum,’ with its vast number of changes 
of plant names. Moreover, this date has been recommended by 
the Berlin committee of botanists, as well as by the conference 
of botanists which met at Genoa; and it is adopted by the 
‘majority of botanists in Europe and America.” Se 
‘‘To one method of citation used in the Catalogue the writer 
must raise a protest, as it seriously threatens to hinder that uni- 
