328 NATURAL SCIENCE. Nov., 



distribution. Hitherto known only as a native of the peat bogs of 

 Canada and Eastern North America, it has recently been discovered 

 in Western China, on the borders of Tibet, together with the remark- 

 able little C. arietintim, also a native of the same parts of North 

 America. 



As a genus, Cypripedium has fared somewhat badly with the people 

 who discuss nomenclature. In his review of Mr. Jackson's monu- 

 mental " Index," the editor of the Journal of Botany refers to the 

 omission of Ascherson's emendation of the Linnean name, to wit 

 Cypripedilum, launched in the Flora of Brandenburg in 1864 to accord 

 with the etymology (ireSikov, a slipper), since Cypripedium, as the 

 German doctor observes, " ist nicht zu erklaren." It is to be regretted 

 that Pfitzer should have taken up Ascherson's name in Engler and 

 Prantl's " Pflanzenfamilien " and elsewhere. 



The practice of amending names the etymology of which is not 

 clear to the emendators mind is a reprehensible one, and apt to lead 

 to still greater confusions. Thus, to correspond with Ascherson's 

 alteration, Pfitzer writes Selenipedilum for Selenipedum of Reichenbach^/z7., 

 and also establishes a third genus — Paphiopedilum. The new genus 

 must stand, but the other two return to their original form, and so 

 the symmetry is destroyed. Another instance of the same inter- 

 meddling is supplied by Lestiboudois' Heleocharis for Robert Brown's 

 Eleocharis, to explain its derivation from e"Aos a marsh, and dispel any 

 idea of pity (e'Aeosr) or a kitchen table (e Aeo's). 



American Botanists in Congress. 

 The September number of the Botanical Gazette is filled with 

 reports of meetings. The American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science met at Madison, Wis., on Thursday, August 17, and 

 sat till the following Tuesday. Professor C. E. Bessey presided over 

 the botanical section, and the Gazette prints an abstract of his address, 

 as well as an outline of the papers and discussions. In his address, 

 entitled "Evolution and Classification," the Professor upbraids systema- 

 tists for their unscientific conservatism in retaining the crude system 

 of Jussieu and De Candolle for the arrangement of flowering plants 

 for more than thirty years after the general acceptance of the doctrine 

 of evolution. Evolution has taught us what relationship means, and 

 from the new point of view a natural classification is not merely an 

 orderly arrangement of similar organisms, but an expression of genetic 

 relationship, in which primitive forms will precede those derived, 

 and the relationship of the latter be positively indicated. Just as 

 Carl Linne's artificial system was in general use among botanists long 

 after the construction of a natural system by Jussieu, so in turn this 

 natural system has persisted by the help of conservatism and reverence, 

 till ceasing to be natural it has become a makeshift, and "is now as 

 much a clog and hindrance to the systematic botany of the higher 

 plants, as was that of Linne sixty years ago." 



