xii PREFACE. 
the same principle obviously applies to all names constructed 
in accordance with Linnean rules. The supposed appeal to 
justice begins by repudiating the authority of the lawgiver. 
Alphonse de Candolle appreciated the true position when he 
said: “ The real merit of Linnzeus has been to combine, for all 
plants, the generic name with the specific epithet.” 
ii. But the claim for justice works the greatest injustice, 
and it is not even tempered with mercy. Any careless or 
incompetent botanist can tack on a blundering name to an 
undescribed plant, and his blunder with his name attached is 
to be handed down to posterity for all time. As Linneus saw, 
the real scientific feat is to discover its true affinity, not to give 
it a haphazard label. And the author who does this success- 
fully is the one whose insight deserves commemoration. It is 
impossible not to agree with Sir Joseph Hooker when he says: 
“T regard the naturalist who puts a described plant into its 
proper position in regard to its allies as rendering a greater @ 
service to science than its describer when he either puts it 
into a wrong place or throws it into any of those chaotic 
heaps, miscalled genera, with which systematic works. still 
abound.” 
ili. Every revision of the contents of an order involves a 
reconsideration of the mutual affinities of its contents, and this 
usually involves some transposition of species from one genus 
to another, or the creation of new genera. It may be hoped 
that the process is generally judiciously accomplished. But 
in any case it yields a crop of synonyms. This is inevitable, 
and these in a work like the present have to be examined and 
quoted. The labour involved will be evident from many of its 
pages. There is said to be a species of Fimbristylis with 135. 
synonyms. ‘Taxonomic science must in the end be crushed by 
its own literary top-hamper. The only remedy eventually will 
be to draw a line behind which synonymy will be ignored. ~— 
But we need not add to the burden by the creation of a new - 
specific name when one which is valid and available already : 
exists in the genus. The appeal to justice lays itself open in 
such cases to the suspicion of being little more than a cloak 
for the vanity of the author, 
