4IO NATURAL SCIENCE. au..ust. 



botany is the science of plants and not the science of names. Nomen- 

 clature is only one of those tools which is necessary to botany, and 

 this being the case, points of nomenclature should be subordinated 

 to science. 



*' A principle of botanical convenience has been established by 

 those who prefer one name to another on account of expediency or 

 convenience. This principle should have a great deal of influence. It 

 has been so recognised by the greatest botanists, and from their authority 

 receives great weight. I prefer the word expediency as a better term 

 than convenience to designate the principle, that the demands of 

 science over-ride any merely technical claims of priority, &c. 



" Priority of specific names appears to be based entirely upon 

 one section of the code of 1867. That simply says that when a 

 species is transferred from one genus to another, the specific name is 

 maintained. This principle is usually understood and applied in the 

 way that the oldest specific name has a right in all cases to be 

 retained. It cannot fairly be so interpreted and applied, since it 

 governs only to the extent that this should be the law, but it is not to 

 be made an ex post facto law. Thus, when a transfer has been made, 

 that ends the matter so far as the choice of a specific name is con- 

 cerned, and no one is authorised to take up a different name. This 

 practice of retaining the oldest name under the genus, no matter what 

 older specific names there may be, was adopted by Dr. Gray in his 

 later years, and by the Kew botanists, for the reason that, once 

 established and pretty generally recognised, it would avoid the great 

 mass of synonymy which is being heaped like an incubus upon the 

 science. I must express surprise that Dr. Britton has not considered 

 it his duty to publish the last written words of Dr. Gray, which were 

 addressed to him upon this subject, and which expressed his positive 

 opinions upon this point. 



" There is nothing whatever of an ethical character inherent in a 

 name through any priority of publication or position, which should 

 render it morally obligatory upon anyone to accept one name rather 

 than another ; otherwise it would be applicable or true as well in the 

 case of ordinal names, morphological names, teratological, and every 

 other form of name to which now no one feels himself bound to apply 

 the law of priority. The application of this law as at present 

 practised by many botanists, which would make it the one great law 

 of botanical nomenclature before which every other must yield, 

 regardless even of common sense, is a mere form of fetichism 

 exemplified in science. Many instances of the application of this 

 law are not science, but are rather superstition. — February 22, 1892." 



The letter is short, but to the point. Important as the subject 

 of nomenclature undoubtedly is, there is great danger of over- 

 estimating the importance, and forgetting that Botany is, after all, 

 the science of plants, and not of names ; and the incubus of synonymy 

 which is being heaped on the science by the perpetual tinkering of 



