cook: determining types of genera 137 



The fact to which I wish to call attention is the close resem- 

 blance between this term age or aje and the terms applied to all 

 kinds of " potatoes" by many of our southern tribes. The Creek 

 and Alabama word is aha, but that of the Choctaw and the 

 Hitchiti, the ancient inhabitants of southern Georgia, ahe. Along 

 with some qualifying words this is used for the Irish potato, 

 sweet potato, and yam, but it is also applied to a wild root which 

 it is natural to suppose was the original plant so designated. 

 The root to which the Alabama Indians apply the term, plus a 

 qualifying adjective meaning " rough," tcagawa, has been iden- 

 tified for me by Mr. Paul C. Standley, of the National Her- 

 barium, as Apios apios (L.) MacM. Presumably this is the 

 same as the Creek aha akiiwahi, "mud potato," and the Choctaw 

 ahe kamassa or ahe ahkamassa, "hard potato." 



We have here the perplexing problem of a very similar name 

 applied originally, to all appearances, to entirely unrelated plants 

 and by derivation 'to the very same plants. The resemblance 

 may be purely accidental, but I think it more likely that the 

 word was borrowed from the West Indies by the southern tribes, 

 or vice versa, as the name of several roots not perfectly discrimi- 

 nated from each other. Precisely the same thing has happened 

 in the case of the name kunti. This was originally applied by 

 the Creek Indians to the roots of several species of Smilax; but 

 after those Creeks who came to be known as Seminole had 

 invaded Florida, they found a Zamia in use there to which they 

 gave the very same term. At first the older kunti was distin- 

 guished as the "red kunti" and the new plant as the "white 

 kunti;" but later, or at least where only one of them was to be 

 had, the qualifying adjective was dropped. It thus came about 

 that the same word had a totally different application in different 

 sections of the territory occupied by the same people. 



TAXONOMY. — Determining types of genera. O. F. Cook, 

 Bureau of Plant Industry. 



Biological taxonomy is being rebuilt on a new foundation. 

 The older method of naming by concepts is giving place to nam- 

 ing by types. Names are no longer thought of as relating pri- 



