The Case of Doctor Otto Kuntze. 1 



" Y a-t-il une charlatanerie plus grande que de mettre les mots a, la place des choses, 

 et de vouloir que les autres croient ce que vous ne croyez pas vous-meme ? " — Voltaire. 



One recalls the noisy campaign, undertaken by Doctor 0. Kuntze in 

 1891, and continued in the following years with a view to regenerate 

 botanical nomenclature. By means of a plausible interpretation of the 

 Paris Code, and by grossly altering several of its fundamental articles, 

 M. Kuntze succeeded in giving to his schism a varnish of legality. In 

 spite of his eccentricities one discussed him with more or less defer- 

 ence. Slashing and pugnacious, blowing his own trumpet, obstinate 

 in his fallacies, he rode, not without bluster, his hobby of priority at 

 any cost. Putting words in the place of facts, as Voltaire says, Kuntze 

 substituted for definitions, prescribed by the Laws of 1867, his trick of 

 identification {Becognoscirung), and thus resuscitated an infinity of 

 generic names, still-born according to Article 46 of the Code, applying 

 to them his new scale of demi-nudity and that of the fractional priority 

 of 50 per cent, absurdities combated by Alphonse de Candolle up to 

 his last breath. 



This resulted in letting loose a mass of about 30,000 species, and 

 about the same number of nobis. These nobis, according to their 

 author, mattered little to him, so little that several times over he has 

 declared he could only condescend to make concessions on some points 

 of secondary importance, on the condition of acceptance in their entirety 

 of all his " reforms," that is to say all his nobis. Besides, his real aim 

 was more elevated. To establish an immutable nomenclature ad 

 acternum, to cut short all disputes on detail, to render every author his 

 due (especially those who have left simple labels) — such a result could 

 only be obtained by iron rules, much more particularised than those of 

 1867, and provident of endless litigious cases. 



Unhappily for Dr. Kuntze, his neo-code did not appear, to the bulk 

 of botanists, based upon " des motifs assez clairs et assez forts pour que 

 chacun put les comprendre et les accepter " (§ 2, Laws). Many of 

 the premisses seemed arbitrary, many of the consequences doubtful, and 

 it was considered annoying that Kuntze wished to impose them on 

 the world, contrary to the 2nd and fundamental article of the Laws 



1 By E. Levier. 8vo, Florence, 1898 (Nov.): especially translated for this journal. 



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