BOTANICAL ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 9 



systematic works still abound.' This has always seemed to 

 me not merely sound sense, but a scientific way of treating 

 the matter. What we want in nomenclatare is the maximum 

 amount of stability and the rainimnm amount of change 

 compatible with progress in perfecting our taxonomic 

 system. Nomenclature is a means, not an end. There are 

 perhaps 150,000 species of flowering plants in existence. 

 What we want to do is to push on the task of getting them 

 named and described in an intelligible manner, and their 

 affinities determined as correctly as possible. We shall then 

 have material for dealing with the larger problems which the 

 vegetation of our globe will present when treated as a whole. 

 To me the botanists who waste their time over priority are 

 like boys who, when sent on an errand, spend their time in 

 playing by the roadside. By such men, even Linniieus is not 

 to be allowed to decide his own names. To one of the most 

 splendid ornaments of our gardens he gave the name of 

 Magnolia grandiflora; this is now to be known as Mag- 

 nolia foetida. The reformer himself is constrained to admit, 

 • The change is a most unfortunate one in every way.'^* It is 

 difficult to see what is gained by making it, except to render 

 systematic botany ridiculous. The genus Aspidium, known 

 to every fern cultivator, was founded by Swartz. It now con- 

 tains some 400 species, of which the vast majority were of 

 course unknown to him at the time; yet the names of all 

 these are to be changed because Adanson founded a genus, 

 Dryopleris, which seems to be the same thing as Aspidium. 

 What, it may be asked, is gained by the change? To science 

 it is certainly nothing. On the other hand, we lumber our 

 books with a mass of synonyms, and perplex everyone who 

 takes an interest in lerns. It appears that the name of the 

 well-known Australian genus, Banksia, really belongs to 

 Pimelea; the species are therefore to be renamed, and 

 Banksia is to be rechristened Sirmuellera, after Sir Fer- 

 dinand von Mueller; a proposal which, I need hardly say, 

 did not emanate from an Englishman. 



^Garden and Forest, ii. 615. 



