622 NATURAL SCIENCE. 



therefore the following works cannot claim a right of priority : — Rum- 

 phius, Herbarium Amboinense (1741-1755); Burmann, Flora Indica 

 (1768); Patr. Browne, /-//s/r'rj' of Jamaica (1756); Lamarck, Illustra- 

 tion dfs Genres pro parte, &c. 



Ad III. There are to be conserved Adenia as well as Adenium, 

 Acnista as well as Acnistus, Alectra as well as Alectryon, Apios as well as 

 Apium, Ruhia as well as Rubns, Bellis as well as Bellinm, Chloris as well 

 as Chlorea and Chlora, Glyphaa as well as Glyphis and Glyphia, Calo- 

 pofj^on as well as Calopogoniiim, Atropa as well as Atropis, Galax as well 

 as Galaxia and Galactia, Danac as well as Danais, Drimia as well as 

 Drimys, Glechoma as well as Glcchon, Ilydrothrix as well as HydrotricJie, 

 Micranthus as well as Micrantheum, Micwtea as well as Microtus, Platy- 

 stcmma as well as Plaiystemon, Silvcra as well as Silvia, &c. ; we doubt 

 that there is any scholar who will confound them. On the contrary, 

 Tetraclis and Tetraclcis, Oxythece and Oxytheca, Epidcndrum and Epideu- 

 dron, Oxycoccus and Oxycoccos, A sterocarpus a.nd Astrocarpus, Peltostema ?LV\d 

 Peliistema, are only different modes of spelling the same word, and the 

 newer one is to be refused, if they name different genera. 



Ad IV. The impulse that led to the acknowledgment of the right 

 of priority was only the vivid desire to create a stable nomenclature. 

 If we see that by the absolute and unlimited observance of 

 the principle we probably gain the contrary of what we 

 intended, we, who have ourselves made the rules of priority 

 as a law, have the right to amend the latter. Therefore we 

 present a list of genera that have more than a merely scientific 

 interest, or that are very large, and we propose to conserve them in 

 spite of the rules of priority, in order to avoid a general confusion by 

 the change of many thousand names. 



When the memorandum was first submitted to us at the British 

 Museum, we thought that the date 1737 might continue to be 

 accepted for genera, and we wrote in that sense to Professor Engler. 

 In his absence, Professor Ascherson replied, pointing out that this 

 date had only been fixed by M. De CandoUe in 1883, and that that 

 botanist had no intention of implying that all genera established 

 between 1737 and 1753, and ignored by Linnaeus in the Species Piantarum, 

 should be resuscitated. M. De CandoUe now fully concurs in the 

 proposals of the Berlin memorandum, and adopts the fourth edition 

 of the Geneva (1752) for genera, and the first edition of the 

 Species (1753) for the species. The fact that the fourth edition 

 of the Genera is not actually by Linnaeus himself, is met by the state- 

 ment that it was recognised by him as authentic, seeing that he styled 

 the next edition, b}' himself, the fifth. After this explanation, the 

 British Museum botanists withdrew their objection, and gave their 

 corporate assent to the only article of the Berlin memorandum as to 

 which they had had any doubt in the following terms : 



" We do not see how we can stop short of 1737 when dealing with 

 genera as genera. But as binomial names — and every specific name 

 includes, of course, both the generic and the trivial designations — did 

 not exist until the publication of the Species Piantarum in 1753, we 

 agree that a name given in that work cannot be set aside for one the 

 generic part of which was ignored or set aside by Linnaeus ; and we 



