THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE BINOMIAL 

 SYSTEM OF NOMENCLATURE 



HELEN A. CHOATE 



Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts 



Despite the importance of binomial nomenclature in modern 

 biology, no careful study appears to have been made, or at least 

 published, as to its origin and development into the present form. 

 Such references to the subject as do exist are of a very general 

 character and are frequently erroneous, following one or the 

 other of two opposing views. The most commonly accepted 

 opinion is that to Linnaeus alone should credit be given for 

 establishing this system, while others hold such a position as that 

 of Sachs 1 and see in Linnaeus' work no original contribution 

 to the development of the system, but merely the firm establish- 

 ment of methods already in use. That either of two such diver- 

 gent views should alone be correct is shown by experience to be 

 inherently improbable, and a careful study of the evidence shows 

 in fact that the truth does lie between these two extremes. 



As might be expected, there was little or no recognized system 

 followed in the very earliest plant nomenclature. Where but 

 one plant of a kind was known, usually a single name was suffi- 

 cient, e.g., Clethra; where two or more of a kind were known, an 

 additional word or phrase was added to the name already given 

 to distinguish the different kinds, e.g., Mespilos anthedon, pre- 

 cisely as in our own popular terminology, we say Chestnut, but 

 Red Oak, Pin Oak, etc. In such cases the first name was such 

 as we would now regard as generic, while the second word or 

 phrase was specific; and both the generic and the specific parts 

 might consist either of one or more words, although naturally, 

 as the number of known species increased, many of the specific 

 names developed into long descriptive phrases. In this way a 



1 Sachs, J., History of Botany.' Translated by Garnsey and Balfour, Oxford, 

 pp. 33 and 83, 1906. 



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