184 MONS. FEE ON THE NOMENCLATUEE 



the stamina vary in number, being sometimes reduced to two, and 

 sometimes increased to eight, has been variously spelled, authors 

 either admitting or not admitting the doubling of the/. "We are 

 about to show how this has occurred. 



Although several botanists, even among contemporaries, have 

 attributed this genus to Linnaeus, it is certain that it belongs to 

 Sauvages. What may have led to this mistake is, that the first 

 official mention of the genus is found in the first volume of the 

 'Amoenitates Academicae,' page 386, under the year 1749, in a 

 thesis of Dassow, maintained under the presidency of Linnaeus on 

 the 12th of June 1747, and that the generic characters are there 

 given, for the first time, four years before Sauvages himself pub- 

 lished them. In this Thesis we read, " Bufonia, auctore Sauvages ;" 

 it should have been added, "m litteris ad Linncdumy 



The correspondence of these two illustrious men lasted for no 

 less than eight-and-twenty years ; it commenced on the 20th of 

 January 1737, and terminated on the 3rd of May 1765, about 

 eighteen months before the death of Sauvages. The letters, forty- 

 three in number, are now in the possession of M. d'Hombre-Eirmas, 

 of Alais, grand-nephew of the celebrated Professor of Montpellier, 

 who has long had the intention of publishing them. They are 

 interesting, and I have been permitted to satisfy myself that they 

 do not enable us to determine the precise date of the creation of 

 the genus Buffonia. JSTevertheless they contain the proof that it 

 is anterior to 1745, inasmuch as in a letter of the 15th of October 

 of that year, Linnaeus says that the flower is tetrandrous, and 

 that he will make sure of this on more perfect specimens, his own 

 being incomplete ; and long afterwards, in Letter XIX., of the 

 20th of August 1753, he begs Sauvages to settle his doubts on 

 this point : " qucdso etiam Jiac (Estate examines stamina Btiffonice ; 

 Lcejlingius scrihit 4 esse in singula floret'' 



It thus becomes perfectly certain that Sauvages, before defi- 

 nitively constituting the genus Buffonia, referred it in 1743 or 

 1744 to Linnaeus, towards whom at that time converged all dis- 

 coveries of interest in natural history. Linnaeus and Dassow 

 having written Bufonia, we may be allowed to believe that Sau- 

 vages wrote the name in the same manner in his correspondence. 



The typical species of this genus, although (contrary to the 

 statement of certain authors) a native of dry and sandy soil, bears 

 an astonishing resemblance to Juncus lufonius of our marshes, and 

 Linnaeus may have supposed that the generic name was destined 

 to recall this external analogy, being ignorant of the naturalist to 



