TREATMENT OF THE SUBJECT-MATTER. 
In most cases, the following points prominently present them- 
selves: 
I. Naming the plant (or the animal) from which the sub- 
stance is derived. 
Here it happens not infrequently that a consideration of the 
synonyms is indispensable in order to avoid misunderstanding; 
for if we revert no farther back than to the time of Linné, we 
sometimes meet with plants which, since then, have been 
variously named by botanists. Thus, for instance, Hagenia 
abyssinica Willdenow (1790), Bankesia abyssinica Bruce (1799), 
and Brayera anthelmintica Kunth (1824), designate the tree 
which furnishes us the koosso. Linné, in 1737, represented the 
clove tree under the name of Caryophyllus aromaticus, but Thun- 
berg, in 1788, named it Hugenia caryophyllata, properly at- 
taching it to the genus Eugenia, which had existed since the 
year 1729. Many examples of this character are to be found’ in 
the families of the Umbellifere, Composite, and Labiate. 
Since the end of the preceding century, the mother-plant of the 
calumba root has received half a dozen, and the sabadilla plant 
four names. On the other hand, the same name has occasion- 
ally been bestowed upon different plants. Thus Linné’s Croton 
Cascarilla is a different shrub from that so named by Bennett, 
and the Croton Eluteria of the latter, which furnishes the 
cascarilla bark, is not the same tree as that intended by Swartz 
under the same name. A similar condition exists with refer- = 
ence to Cassia lanceolata, under which name Nectoux under-  _ 
stood the present Cussia acutifolia, Delile, Wight, and Arnott 
the ©. angustifolia of Vahl, while Forskal’s C. lanceolata is - 
identical with C. Sophera L. Pliny had ee made a dis- ae 
