( 



26 The Ottawa Naturalist. [May 



long known as T. aquilegifolium. By some one's blunder, the 

 fruit of the well known Old World plant was placed before the 

 botanist for diagnosis instead of that of the new Canadian species. 

 Presumably the two w^ere growing side by side in that Paris 

 garden, andt by the time the plants were in fruit, the one be- 

 came mistaken for the other; but the result was that we can 

 make no use of the rather full description of Cornut in our 

 attempt to identify that particular Canadian Thalictrum. 



As regards the plant itself, its fertility on Old World soil, 

 its free dissemination to other gardens near to and far from 

 Paris, and its universal recognition as an American and even a 

 Canadian species, there is copious evidence. We trace it easily 

 in the published records of various European gardens and in 

 other prints, all the Avay from Cornui; in 1635 to Moench in 1794, 

 a period of 160 years. It is mentioned usually as T. Canadense, 

 Cornu';, in the works of Herm.ann, Tournefort and others on the 

 continent, and in those of Parkinson, of Ray, of Morison and of 

 Philip Miller in England. Meanwhile Linnaeus had arbitrarily 

 altered the name to T. Cornuti. It was in no respect more ap- 

 propriate than the original, and in Linnasus's time alreadv long 

 established T. Canadense. A mere caprice often seems to have 

 ruled the mind of that nomenclator, so that changes in nomen- 

 clature were made as if in sheer defiance of the principle of 

 priority. But Philip Miller verv soon restored the original name 

 put forth by Cornut. Nevertheless so abject was the Linnaeolatry 

 of the after years that, until almost the end of the nineteenth 

 century the name T. Cornuti was the one that stood in almost 

 all the books, whether of American or of universal botany. 

 Moench, indeed, in the year 1794, displaced both names, averse 

 as he was to using either personal or geographic specific names. 

 He called the plant from Canada T. conjertum; and so a third 

 appellation had been assigned, yet all the while no such descrip- 

 tion of the species had ever been published as would enable the 

 most expert descriptive botanist to identify .the plant. T . 

 Canadense, T. Cornuti and T. conjertum. were all three little or 

 no better than nomina nuda, names only, and therefore without 

 any title whatsoever to adoption in any kind of systematic 

 botany. 



In respect only to the T. Canadense of Philip Miller will this 

 comment of mine be likely to be called in question. Miller de- 

 votes quite a paragraph of his Dictionary to an informal account 

 of the plant. It is the fifth of his meadow-rues, and he says of it : 



"The fifth sort grows naturally in North America. This 

 has a fibrous root of a dark colour. The stalks are smooth, of 

 a purple colour, and rise three or four feet high, branching to- 

 ward the top. The leaves are like those of the Columbine, of a 



