president's address. 709 



equivoques ou jetei* de la confusion dans la science. Apres cela, 

 ce qu'il y a de plus important est d'eviter toute creation inutile de 

 noms, Les autres considerations, telles que la correction grammati- 

 cale absolue, la regidaritc ou Teuphonie des noms, un usage plus 

 ou moins repandu, les egards pour des personnes, etc., malgre leur 

 importance incontestable, sont relativement accessoires." 



Names must not be altered, except for a grave reason. Asa 

 Gray says,^' '• Mere improvement is no warrant for alteration. 

 Mistakes may indeed be corrected. Thus Nuttall's genus 

 Wisteria, in honour of Dr. Wistar, was properly corrected to 

 Wistaria in conformity with the rules that personal names should 

 retain their orthography as nearly as possible." 



Mueller (' Census ') changed Dicksonia antarctica to D. Billar- 

 dieri, because he said it does not extend to antarctic regions. The 

 Berlin Rules were not promulgated at the time, but I think it 

 would be considered as overstraining Rule 11. 



Take another case, Fiinhristylis diphylla, Vahl, Enum. ii. 289 

 (1806). (Syn. F. communis, Kunth, Enum. ii. 234 (1837). 

 Mueller accepts Kunth's name {F. communis) in his ' Census' in 

 spite of the obvious priority of Vahl's name. This seems to me 

 another instance of Mueller's habit of rejecting specific names 

 because the name is badly chosen. The name diphylla is a very 

 bad one, and was probably given by Vahl because his type speci- 

 mens had mostly two involucral bracts. 



The late R. D. Fitzgerald described an orchid under the name 

 Dendrohium fcdcorostrum. Later on, in publishing a plate, he 

 \Yvote falcorostris. Mueller ('Census') improved the name into 

 falconirostre, which Fitzgerald resented, and I think rightly so. 

 The correct name is fcdcorostrum, which was the original one. 



These three Australian examples are perhaps sufficiently illus- 

 trative. Non- Australian instances have been quoted by the dozen. 

 For example, B. Daydon Jacksonf points out that crassinervia 



* Silliman's Journ., May, 1880, quoted in Journ. Bot. xviii. 186. 

 t Journ. Bot. xix. 78. 



