688 PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 



Daydon Jackson shows'^ that this date is too earh\ At the same 

 place will be found a preliminary criticism of Kuntze's ' Revisio 

 Generum Plantarum,' a monument alike to the author's industry 

 and reckless desire for alteration. 



Subsequently Kuntze points out the advantages of 1737 as a 

 starting-point of botanical nomenclature,! in which he shows the 

 number of generic names that need not be suppressed if 1737 be 

 taken and not 1735 (the date of Linn?eus' ' Systema '). The 

 editorial remarks in the Journal of Botany should be read, and I 

 need not repeat them here. 



At p. 471 Kuntze writes " a plea for my 1737 proposal, which, 

 with the editorial notes that supplement it, should be carefully 

 perused." 



My own view is that the Berlin proposal to adopt 1753 as the 

 earliest date both for generic and specific names is worthy of 

 acceptance. British botanists are gradually accepting it, and I 

 think that in a very few years there will be practical unanimity 

 as regards this single date. 



We have no pre-Linnean difficulties in reojard to Australian 

 plants purely endemic. With the exception of a handful 

 collected by Dampier at the end of the 17th century, and which 

 were treated as curiosities, no Australian plants were collected 

 until 1770, and none were described until a few j^ears later. 

 The difficulties, if any, arise chiefly in regard to plants which 

 form the Indo-Malayan element in our vegetation, the cosmo- 

 politan species and the introduced weeds. 



We are, therefore, not so much interested in this really impor- 

 tant matter as our brethren in other parts of the world, and we 

 look for our fellow- workers in Europe and elsewhere to speedily 

 come to an agreement as regards the date referred to, when I do 

 not hesitate to say that we in Australia will loyally fall into line 

 with them in this respect. 



* Journ. Bot. xxx. 57. 

 t Gaertnerisches Centralblatt, Berlin, 1899. No. 2. Translated in Journ. 



Bot. xxxviii. 7. 



■^ Journ. Bot. xxxviii. 



