SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



Nevertheless he might have done so and most reasonably; indeed 

 he must have done so, had the ideas of universality and priority in 

 nomenclature been conceived and approved by him; because botany 

 is of Greek rather than Latin origin, and so the Greek names of 

 plants happen to be older than the Latin names. It was needful 

 here to take a survey of the whole situation; for from Brunfels 

 forward we must be looking for adumbrations of any of those prin- 

 ciples which in our time have come to rule or misrule biologic 

 nomenclature. 



3. Even as a Latin writer, and using none but Latin generic 

 names as headings for his chapters, Brunfels does not pay respect 

 to priority. He readily adopts, out of several Latin names, an- 

 cient and mediaeval, not the oldest, but the one that best suits his 

 own purpose or fancy. From before the Christian era until six 

 or seven centuries after it the water lilies had been known as the 

 genus Nymphcea. Then from the eighth century forward to the 

 thirteenth and later the Arabic name Nenuphar had usurped its 

 place in Latin botany generally. Brunfels adopts Nenuphar and 

 writes Nymph&a down among the synonyms; this manifestly for 

 the reason that most of the botanists and druggists of his own 

 time knew the plants as Nenuphar and would be disturbed if he 

 should restore the classic name. Here, then, we have 



4. The principle that the name by which a genus is known to 

 most of one's contemporaries is the one to be taken up, there 

 being no other objection against the name. 



5. That a later name consisting of one word only is commonly 

 permitted by Brunfels to supplant a very ancient one made up of 

 two words has been already quite clearly demonstrated. 



6. A species name, or cognomen, is not assigned the type which 

 alone represents its genus. 



7. While plainly favoring the selection of the best of several 

 names as the one to be perpetuated, Brunfels, as if realizing the 

 inconvenience of having many synonyms, is moved to use the 

 greatest care and caution against creating them; that is, against 

 creating Latin synonyms. This is well shown by his great aversion 

 to assigning Latin names to types which to him appear undescribed. 

 He publishes freely the engravings of such, but is careful to label 

 them with no other than the German vernacular names. I have 

 not found him once deviating from this very conservative practice. 

 And, under his beautiful plate of Pulsatilla, in a long paragraph 

 he explains why he holds to such a course. In none of the authors 

 whom he has been able carefully to study has he found any descrip- 



