VOL. III.] A Note on Nomenclature. 173 



After these two examinations, made conscientiously, the number 

 of *tie clianges proposed by Kiaitze must be reduced by two-thirds. 



While rendering, therefore, due justice to the learning and accu- 

 racy of this scientist, I am bound to say that there are several sources 

 of error in his conclusions. I will call attention to the two most 

 important ones: 



(a) Kuntze takes for genera names only apparently generic, and 

 which are not accompanied by characters sufficiently descriptive of 

 them. A genus is only constituted by the union of a name and the 

 distinctive characters of the plant. Without that it is a genus still- 

 born. It is nil, and therefore can produce no result, especially in 

 the application of the law of priority. All botanists are agreed 

 about noinina mtda or seminiida. 



(b) The starting point for the genera of Linnaeus is certainly 

 his Genera of 1737, and not his Systema, ed. i, of 1735. This latter 

 had only for its object to make known the twenty-four classes of the 

 author. Some names of genera are indicated there, but without 

 special characters, for the genus is not defined by the single notion 

 conveyed by the term Hexandria or Pentandria digynia. It was in 

 1737 that Linnaeus enumerated and characterized all the genera he 

 was acquainted with, in his Genera, in which he abandoned the 

 names of the Sy sterna, regarding them, no doubt, as useless. 



In my Nouvelles Remarqiies sur la Nomenclature, in 1883, I have 

 explained why we should start from the Genera rather than from 

 the Systema, and I have seen with pleasure this opinion recently 

 sustained by Daydon Jackson (Bot. Journ. February, 1892); 

 Botanical Gazette (March, 1892); and Schumann (Naturwiss, Rund- 

 schau, Jarhrgang 7, No. 13). The remarks of this latter scientist, 

 favorable to our laws of nomenclature of 1867, have a value so much 

 the greater because he says: An iinderstanding had been arrived at, 

 before their publicatio7i, zvith the botanists of Berlin and some foreign 

 botayiists. 



The principles which I maintained in 1867 and in 1883 are thus 

 supported by good judges, and I confess it is a great satisfaction to 

 me in my old age. 



