62 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



Sponsors of the "American code" issue a new clause requiring- 

 that everybody forget that the Japanese and their language 

 exist? Would it not be more sensible to adopt a language, 

 such as the Latin, that does not change and write, just as the 

 rest of the world has agreed to do, all new descriptions in it? 

 Theoretically the editor of American Botanist is strongly in 

 favor of having all descriptions in Latin ; practically he has 

 continued to describe new species in English. He does not 

 fail to perceive, however, that if all the Russian, French, Ger- 

 man, Italian and Japanese botanists who are now describing 

 plants agree to write descriptions in Latin, he will have to un- 

 derstand only one language besides his own, instead of half a 

 dozen as formerly in order to keep in touch with the botany 

 of the world and he hopes in time to convert Miihlenhergia to 



his view of the case. 



* * * 



The third International Botanical Congress will be held 

 at Brussels from May 14th to May 22nd, 1910. The second 

 Congress, held at Vienna in 1905 drew up a set of rules of 

 botanical nomenclature since known as the Vienna Code, but 

 these rules were mostly made for flowering plants, though 

 some apply to other groups. Various special questions, relat- 

 ing to crj^ptogams still remain to be settled, and these will be 

 discussed at the coming meeting. The committee on Crypto- 

 gamic Nomenclature consists of eminent cryptogamic botanists 

 from all parts of the world and the nomenclature of these 

 groups now bids fair to be placed upon a stable basis. A list 

 of "nomina conservanda," or names which are not to be af- 

 fected by rules of "priority," is suggested for each group, in- 

 cluding the ferns and their allies. We who are more interested 

 in the plants themselves, than in their names, hope the nomina 

 conservanda will be as large as possible. Some four 

 hundred generic names were thus reserv^ed among the flower- 

 ing plants. 



