302 E. LEVIER [april 



assertion that I accepted it. But Kuntze has raised to an academical 

 art the art of making authors say things that they did not say. I 

 congratulate myself to-day that I did not shrink from the publication 

 of some phrases torn from my early letters. They prove that M. 

 Kuntze deludes himself and wishes to delude others in attributing to 

 me hostile intentions from the beginning of our epistolatory relations. 

 When one attacks in treachery and in secrecy (hinterlistig a/ushorchen), 

 one weighs one's words somewhat differently. To have reduced an 

 adversary short of arguments to this poor military device, to have put 

 him in the shameful necessity of raking up confidential letters, keen 

 sometimes but never uncivil, to respond to public criticism, to see him 

 struggle like a madman in his virtuous role of slaughtered lamb, all for 

 words, for halting names (noms a bequilles), for priorities more or less 

 shadowy, — such a result is to encourage a third year's candidate in 

 nomenclature. I do not grudge Otto Kuntze a real obligation for 

 having guided my first steps. One is not born a nomenclaturist, as one 

 is born a cook-shop keeper. The eloquence of his eighteen letters 

 made me a model disciple, and his comminatory ultimatum has given 

 me the heroic courage (Todesverachtung), which I should never 

 have otherwise found, to bring before the public our interesting little 

 discussions. Tu l'as voula, Georges Dandin ! 



The second folly of M. Kuntze consists in unwearyingly and ever- 

 lastingly repeating that I have suppressed in my French translation of 

 the Berlin report, made in great haste at Bormio in the presence of 

 Professor Ascherson, who took it away to Genoa, the judgment of 

 Viennese botanists, favourable to the reform of Kuntze and unfavourable 

 to resolution vi. of Berlin. (81 Generic names debarred; among 

 them : Mokof Brami, Oureti, Gansbium, Hondbessen, Chocho, Belutta- 

 Kaka Ad.) 



M. Kuntze pretends to be ignorant of, or believes the public 

 sufficiently badly informed to be ignorant of, the following passage from 

 Atti del congresso botanico internazionale di Genova, 1892, p. 104, 

 line 6, below : " Un groupe de botanistes autrichiens, reunis sous les 

 auspices du professeur v. Kerner condamnc notre projet (iv.) au nom 

 de la loi inconditionnelle de priorite, et tel parait egalement le point de 

 vue de M. Miiller, Arg." (Piapport de M. Ascherson.) Is this 

 clear enough ? Where is the suppression of the unfavourable 

 verdict ? Does M. Kuntze now desire me to translate for the French 

 public, passages from the Viennese document that he thinks favourable 

 to himself? Here is the beginning: 



" Les soussignes ayant pris connaissance d'une lettre de M. 

 Ascherson a M. v. Kerner declarent saluer avec plaisir l'initiative 

 d'une demarche tendant, d'une part, a enrayer le confusion cause'e dans 

 la nomenclature botanique par Vouvrage riccnt de M. 0. Kuntze, Revisio 

 generum plantar uin, d'autre part, a completer les lois de la nomenclature. 

 Les soussignes se saillirent sans reserve (yollinhaltlich) aux resolutions 



