8 ERYTHEA. 



its own. Consequently, if superseded, it may be replaced by 

 another which may be perfectly independent.^^ 



It constantly happens that the same species is named and 

 described by more than one writer, or different views are 

 taken of specific differences by various writers; the species 

 of one are therefore ' lumped ' by another. In such cases, 

 where there is a clioice of names, it is customary to select 

 the earliest published. I agree, however, with the late 

 Sereno Watson^^ that ' there is nothing whatever of an 

 ethical character inherent in a name, through any priority 

 of publication or position, which should render it morally 

 obligatory upon any one to accept one name rather than 

 another.' And in point of fact, Linnaeus and the early 

 systematists attached little importance to priority. The 

 rigid application of the principle involves the assumption 

 that all persons who describe or attempt to describe plants 

 are equally competent to the task. But this is so far from 

 being the case that it is sometimes all but impossible even to 

 guess what could possibly have been meant. ^^ 



In 1872 Sir Joseph Huoker^^ wrote: ' The number of 

 species described by authors who cannot determine their 

 affinities increases annually, and I regard a naturalist who 

 puts a described plant into its proper position in regard to 

 its allies as rendering a greater service to science than its 

 describer when he either puts it into a wrong place or throws 

 it into any of those chaotic heaps, miscalled genera, with which 



30As Alphonse de Candolle points out in a letter published in the 

 Bull, de la Soc. but. de France (xxxix), 'the real merit of Linnseus has 

 been to combine, for all plants, the generic name with the specific 

 epithet.' It is important to remember that in a logical sense the 

 'name' of a species consists, as Linnaeus himself insisted, in the com- 

 bination, not in the specific epithet, which is a mere fragment of the 

 name, and meaningless when taken by itself. ^^Naiure, xlvii. 5i. 



32Darwin, who always seems to me, almost instinctively, to take the 

 right view in matters relating to natural history, is (Life, vol. i, p. 364) 

 dead against the new 'practice of naturalists appending for perpetuity 

 the name of the first describer to species.' He is equally against the 

 priority craze:— 'I cannot yet bring myself to reject very ivell-known 

 names.' {ihid. p. 369). ^^Flora of British India, i, vii. 



