of the type specimen (Schubert [photographer]: ‘* The 
Herbarium of Thomas Walter at the British Museum 
(Natural History), South Kensington, London, Eng- 
land,’ (1946-7) I/eaw Cassine [a bound volume of photo- 
graphs in the Gray Herbarium]). Although Walter’s 
specific epithet is correctly applied to the plant which 
is widely known by that common name, and although 
it antedates Ilex vomitoria by one year, the name falls 
because it is a homonym. 
This dual use of the same binomial has, as Loesener (in 
Bot. Centralbl. 47 (1891) 161-168) pointed out, led to 
contusion, although even arapid examination of the case 
would have made clear all points of uncertainty. E. M. 
Hale’s very excellent historical treatment of the black- 
drink plant (‘‘Z/ew Cassine, the aboriginal North Ameri- 
can tea’’: Bull. No. 14, U.S.D.A. Div. Bot. (1891)), for 
example, suffers from his use of the name Ilea Cassine 
without even one reference to indicate whether the bi- 
nomial of Linnaeus or that of Walter is being accepted ; 
Hartwich’s monumental work on narcotic plants (‘‘Die 
Menschlichen Genussmittel’’ (1911) 468) uses [lea Cas- 
sine L.: and Wehmer (‘‘Die Pflanzenstoffe’’ (1911) 456 ; 
[ed. 2] 2 (1981) 718) accepts I. Cassine Walt. The first 
chemical report (Smith, H. M.: in Am. Journ. Pharm. 
44 (1872) 216) of the discovery of caffeine in a North 
American Jlex is of doubtful value partly because of an 
uncertainty as to which Ilew Cassine was being examined. 
In 1888, still another report of a chemical analysis (Ven- 
able, F. R.: in Chem. News 52 (1885) 172) employed 
the name J/ex Cassine without author citation, thus leav- 
ing room for uncertainty as to the exact species which 
was analysed. An even more interesting result of the 
confusion of the L/ew Cassine of Linnaeus with that of 
Walter is found in a standard pharmacological work 
(Tschirch, A.: ‘‘Handbuch der Pharmacognosie”’ 38, 
[ 104 J 
