72 Recent Literature. [ zoe 



The sooner any botanist of our day divests himself of the idea that 

 he is likely to live to see a settled nomenclature, or that the rest of the 

 botanical world will allow some fifth-rate authority to attach his name 

 to the work of all the great men who have preceded him, the sooner 

 we shall be able to argue out generic questions without lugging all 

 the species in by the ears, and so adding immensely to our syn- 

 onymy. 



The reason for such extensive changes without study of the 

 species, can only be the belief of an author that his judgment will 

 finally settle the nomenclature, and the fact that these wholesale 

 transferences are made almost entirely by those who attach the last 

 combiner's name furnishes the strongest proof of the motive. 

 Whatever fault may be found with Bentham and Hooker for their 

 work in "Genera Plantarum " they must be commended for their 

 modesty, for on the line followed out by Dr. Kuntze they might 

 have attached B. & H. to an immense number of species, with no 

 greater trouble than that involved in the employment of an ad- 

 ditional copyist. 



It should not be forgotten by botanists in haste to settle nomen- 

 clature, that there are two questions hanging over systematic 

 biology of such importance as to cast Dr. Kuntze' s modest 

 contribution to synonymy entirely into shade. The first of 

 these is homonymy as between zoology and botany, a ques- 

 tion which can only be settled by agreement between the great 

 body of zoologists and botanists. The second, the limits of genera, 

 we may all help to solve. About species there is often a consider- 

 able divergence of honest opinion, which time and better knowl- 

 edge will be apt to reconcile, but genera should be more easily 

 settled. It ought to be possible to make to some extent rules as to 

 what should and what should not be taken into consideration, espe- 

 cially as long as genera are to a great extent matters of convenience. 

 Undoubtedly the tendency is to make them more strictly natural, 

 and great modifications are likely to result particularly in such fami- 

 lies as Compositae, Caryophyllaceae, Acanthaceae, etc., in which they 

 are now extremely artificial. A little logic injected into systematic 

 botany might enable us, for instance, to see that if its various sec- 

 tions can be properly included in the genus Ouercus, there can be 

 no sufficient reason for holding Castanopsis distinct from Castanea 

 or Carya from Juglans. The theory that the limits of genera and 



