THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 29 



ment. It is difficult for those not specialists in classifica- 

 tion to understand the merits of so complicated a question, 

 and most persons, having in mind the wonderful advances 

 being made in science, are apt to suppose that anything 

 new represents an advance, and hence they accept it with- 

 out further inquir3'. It is true that the newest things in 

 science usually are the best, but this is by no means neces- 

 sarily or always so ; and in the present case, I, for one, am 

 firmly convinced that the newer system is not the best, 

 and that it will not prevail. I shall trj'-to present the sub- 

 ject very briefly as I understand it. 



Of the two American schools of noinenclature, the 

 older is that of Asa Gray (and hence well-termed the 

 Grayan School) and of his successors at Harvard. The 

 widely-used Gray's Manual, with nearly all American 

 botanical literature prior to ten years ago, and much of it 

 since, is in accord with its principles, which, moreover, 

 are for the most part those in use in the principal botani- 

 cal centres of England and continental Europe. The new- 

 er, or Neo- American School, originated ten years ago with 

 the adoption of a set of rules by a group of American bot- 

 anists, since which time great industry and skill have been 

 devoted to its propaganda. It is led by the botanists of 

 the New York Botanical Garden, and is most familiar 

 through the Illustrated Flora and the Manual of Dr. Brit- 

 ton, but its distinguishing tenets have not found accept- 

 ance outside of America. There are differences betv^een 

 the two schools other than those of nomenclature, but I 

 shall confine myself to this one subject. 



Nearh' all botanists agree upon the general principle 

 that nomenclature shall be based upon priority of publica- 

 tion beginning with the "Species Plantarum" of Linnteus, 

 of 1753, the first work to use binomial or double names in 

 the modern scientific sense ; that is, the first published 

 name for a plant accompanied by a description, in or sub- 

 sequent to that work shall be recognized as its name. 

 Now if this principle, universally observed for all recent 

 names, could have been rigidly and uniformly acted upon 



