620 NATURAL SCIENCE. oct.. 



specific combinations as a whole to be dealt with by a monographer 

 of the genus ; and this has the further advantage of preventing an 

 undue increase of synonyms, as the revision of a genus usually results 

 in the sinking of a certain number of species, which thus do not 

 require renaming. There is no evidence that Dr. Taubert has 

 studied any one of the genera for the species of which he claims to 

 stand as authority. The notion at one time prexailing in some 

 quarters, that a certain amount of " credit " attached to the citation 

 of the name of an author, is entirely set aside by such action as 

 this. 



One word must be said as to the citation of early (and purely 

 imaginary) authorities for names, adopted by Professor Greene, whose 

 enthusiasm for antiquity has led him into regions far more remote 

 than his fellow labourer has ventured to tread. " Lupinus, Catullus" ; 

 " Euphorbia, Pliny" ; Amygdahis, Theophrastus" ; ^'Linum, Vergil " ; are 

 only samples of his charming restorations.^7 The accidental bino- 

 mials employed before the binomial system was invented are also 

 to be accredited to their original authors, so we must write ^^Ranun- 

 culus Jlainmula, Dodoens " ; ^^ Bvomus stenlis, Gerarde" (why does so 

 scrupulous a stickler for accuracy give our Elizabethan botanist a 

 final "e"?); ^^ Artemisia vulgaris, Caesalpinus," and the like.^** Dr. 

 Britton, however, with whom 1 am glad to find myself for once in 

 accord, refuses to countenance Professor Greene's action, which 

 appears to him " to be straining a point for history's sake. "^9 



III. — A Proposal. 



The rapid progress which botanical nomenclature was thus making 

 towards a state of chaos hardly less formidable than that from which 

 we were freed by Linnaeus in 1737-53, was brought to a climax last 

 year by the publication of Dr. Otto Kuntze's ponderous Revisio Gene- 

 rum Plantarum Vascularium. The individual pranks of American 

 botanists might have been left to neutralise each other; but a work 

 of 1,011 pages, preceded by an introduction of 155, and containing a 

 specific renaming of more than 30,000 plants, called for prompt and 

 decisive measures. Dr. Kuntze's book (which space will not allow 

 me to notice fully) has been carefully analysed by Mr. B. D. Jackson 

 in the Journal of Botany,^" and has been reviewed at length in most 

 foreign botanical periodicals. Its publication, indeed, has called 

 forth a strong protest from the whole botanical world, with the 

 e.xception of those Americans who, in some degree, share the author's 

 views ; and the veteran Alphonse De Candolle has taken a prominent 

 part in the protest. 



To the Berlin botanists, iiowever, headed by Professors Engler, 



■■*'' Flora Franciscana passim. '^ IHttonta, vol. i., pp. 179-182. 



^^ Bull. Torrey But. Club, 1891, p. 159. '^ 1892, pp. 57-C2. 



