NOMENCLATURE. 347 



in a manner which avoids confusion and need not overburden the 

 memory. The generic part of the name is peculiar to each 

 genus. The specific adjunct is not available for more than one 

 species of the same genus, but may be used in any other genus. 

 They are so widely thus employed that the number of specific 

 may not exceed that of generic appellations. 



706. To render this sj'stem of nomenclature most serviceable 

 for the ready identification of such numbers of plants or groups, 

 and for the clear and succinct presentation of or reference to 

 what is known and recorded of them, rules are indispensable, 

 and conformity to admitted rules is a manifest duty. Such rules 

 were systematically formulated first by Linnaeus, in his Funda- 

 menta, Critica, and Philosophia Botanica, chiefly for generic 

 names, some of them being of the nature of laws, some rather of 

 recommendations. The most important of them remain in full 

 force, while many of the more particular rules restricting the 

 choice of names have been abandoned. The code was judi- 

 ciously revised (in his Theorie Elementaire) by DeCandolle 

 " who was ruled by the idea of having the law of priori ty prop- 

 erly respected," was critically considered by Lindle}' in his In- 

 troduction to Botany, and has of late been reformulated by 

 Alphonse DeCandolle under the sanction of a Botanical Congress 

 Held at Paris in 1867. 1 



707. Rules for Naming Plants. These "should neither be 

 arbitrary nor imposed by authority. They must be founded on 

 considerations clear and forcible enough for every one to com- 

 prehend and be disposed to accept. The essential point in 

 nomenclature is to avoid or to reject the use of forms or names 



1 Lois de La Nomenclature Botanique, etc., Geneva and Paris, 18fi7. In 

 the English edition, translated by Weddell : Laws of Botanical Nomenclature 

 adopted by the International Botanical Congress held at Paris in August, 

 1867, together with an Historical Introduction and a Commentary, London, 

 Reeve & Co., 1808. The Laws, simply, were reprinted in the American Journal 

 of Science and Arts, July, 1868. A few special points have been more recently 

 discussed by various critics, especially in the Bulletin of the Botanical Society 

 of France, and in that of the Royal Botanical Society of Belgium. See like- 

 wise American Journal of Science and Arts for September, 1870, and August, 

 1 S77 ; also, Bentham in Journal of the Linnean Society, xvii. 189-108, in which 

 a just distinction is indicated between changing a well-established name and 

 giving a new name to a new plant. See American Journal of Science for 

 April, 1870. 



Mention should also be made of Strickland's Report of a Committee on 

 Nomenclature to the British Association in 1842, of Agassiz's classical preface 

 on the nomenclature of genera in his Nomenclator Zoologicus, and of Dall's 

 thorough and well-digested Report of the Committee on Zoological Nomen- 

 clature to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1877, 

 these dealing primarily with zoology. 



