8a MR. BENTHAM ON GENEEIC NOMENCLATURE. 



is, in the immense variety of language, to coin these names inde- 

 finitely ; but it is not perceived that in attempting to introduce 

 them all into ordinary botanical language, the memory is taxed 

 beyond the capabilities of any mind, and the original and legiti- 

 mate object of the Linnean nomenclature is wholly lost sight of. 

 In a purely scientific point of view it matters little if the orders 

 are converted into classes or alliances, the genera into orders, and 

 the sections and subsections into genera ; their relative importance 

 does not depend on the names given to them, but on their height 

 in the scale of comprehensiveness ; but, for language, the great im- 

 plement, without which science cannot work, it is of the greatest 

 importance that the groups which give their substantive names to 

 every species they include should remain large. If, independently 

 of the inevitable increase of genera by new discoveries, such old 

 ones as Ficus, Begonia, Ai^um, Erica, &c. are divided* into 10, 20, 

 30 or 40 independent ones, with names and characters to be re- 

 collected before any one species can be spoken of, if genera are to 

 be reckoned by tens of thousands instead of thousands, the range 

 of any individual botanist will be limited to a small portion of the 

 whole field of the science. So also, so long as the number of 

 orders can be kept within, or not much beyond a couple of hundred, 

 it may reasonably be expected that a botanist of ordinary capacity 

 shall obtain a sufficient general idea of their nature and characters 

 to call them at any time individually to his mind for the purpose 

 of comparison ; but double that number, and all is confusion. 



This inevitable confusion and the necessity of maintaining in 

 someway the larger groups have been perceived by those evenw^ho 

 have gone the farthest in lowering the scale of orders and genera. 

 As a remedy they propose to erect the old genera into independent 

 orders, and the old orders into classes or alliances. This is but an 

 incomplete resumption of the old principles without the advan- 

 tages of the old nomenclature. 



It must be recollected that, although we choose a well-defined 

 and natural group as the one to which we give a generic name, 

 yet this is no indication that that group is considered as the lest 

 defined and better defined than the group immediately above it ; 

 on the contrary it is frequently less so. It is by no means pre- 

 tended that TTrostigma or PJiarmacosyce are better defined than 



* And it must be borne in mind, that if genera so eminently natural and uni- 

 versally recognized as these, are to be thus subdivided and renamed for ordi- 

 nary botanical parlance, so must Carex, Ruhus, Salix, and hundreds of other 

 equally well-established genera be. 



