178 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 5 4. 



One observes that out of the six Consolida names, three have 

 been eliminated, and others brought forward to take their places. 

 I say brought forward; for neither Diapensia, nor Symphyton 

 petrceum nor Tormentilla is coined and proposed as new by Brunfels. 

 He picked them up every one out of the ancient and mediaeval 

 synonymy of the vulnerary herbs; from which also it will appear 

 that other men who lived and wrote botany in times long forgotten 

 but the history of which times must none the less some day be 

 written thought as Brunfels did, that plants totally unlike in 

 appearance, i.e., morphologically very different, ought to be invested 

 with names more than partially different, even when as to 

 qualities and uses they were very similar. And these group names 

 established upon the merely remedial virtues of things visibly 

 most dissimilar must have been misleading and confusing in the 

 extreme. It seems as if Brunfels realized this, and intended to 

 suggest improvement when he set aside three out of the six Consolida 

 genus names and wrote others in place of them. It is as if he had 

 thought it out, that since the different kinds of plants can only be 

 well distinguished and scientifically grouped through attending to 

 their morphology, it is not well that they should bear names 

 that point to their qualities rather than to their forms. Therefore, 

 in the interests of a more sure identification of important plants, as 

 well as at the same time encouraging the appeal to morphologic 

 marks in classifying, it would be a good thing to at least place a 

 check upon this multitudinous repetition of pharmaco-generic 

 names, the first half of which is the same for a half-dozen very 

 dissimilar genera. 



If it be asked why he did not, while he was about it, proceed to 

 the suppression of as many as five out of the six Consolida genus 

 names leaving perhaps one of the genera to bear the simple name 

 Consolida the right answer will seem to be that Brunfels was 

 not of the temperament of the taxonomic revolutionist but only a 

 reformer, and disposed to be somewhat conservative even as a 

 reformer ; between which character and that of the bold iconoclastic 

 revolutionist there are differences. 



Entirely consistent with his aversion for genera made up of 

 plants qualitatively alike but morphologically unlike, is Brunfels' 

 approval and adoption of some in which the species are qualitatively 

 unlike, and at agreement morphologically. Such a genus as this 

 is that which he fully illustrates under the classic name of 

 Urtica, 1 which in the botany of to-day comprises only the true 



Herb. Viv. Icon., vol. i, pp. 151-157. 



