149 



AMERICAN NOMENCLATURE. 



[The absence of recent comment in these pages upon the vagaries 

 indulged in by certain American botanists has not been due to want 

 of material for notice, but rather to its excess. We have also 

 felt that it would not be in the interests of science that space which 

 might be occupied with more useful matter should be devoted to 

 the consideration of schemes which are amended by their proposers 

 sometimes simultaneously with their publication. We are, however, 

 glad to find that the reaction towards saner principles of nomen- 

 clature to which we called attention on p. lU is spreading, as an 

 evidence of which we reprint a portion of the excellent criticism of 

 the Lint of Fteridop/iijta and Spcrmutophyta of North-eastern America 

 prepared by the Nomenclature Committee of the Torrey Botanical 

 Club, contributed by Mr. B. L. Robinson to the Botanical Gazette 

 for March. We have not ourselves received a copy of the List, so 

 that we are unable to review it, but Mr. Robinson's answer to the 

 question, "Is the new system one which possesses the elements of 

 permanency?" is amply sufficient.] 



It is one of the principal arguments for the stability of the pro- 

 posed code that it is a rii/id one, which permits no exceptions, and, 

 to use an expression of a leader in nomenclature reform, "leaves 

 nothing to individual judgment." It is well known, however, to 

 every working botanist that even the selection of the first specific 

 name, after the still more difficult choice of the generic, involves a 

 constant exercise of judgment of the most critical sort, both as 

 regards the exact application of brief and unsatisfactory descriptions 

 and the often doubtful priority of publications. Even the form of 

 the name is sometimes subjected to individual judgment or arbitrary 

 modification in the new system as well as the old, as an illustration 

 will show. It has occurred to a number of writers that the sweet 

 alyssum, common in cultivation, should be separated as a distinct 

 genus. The history of its synonymy is as follows : — Upon page 420 

 of his Families des Flantes, in 1763, Adanson sets up the genua 

 Konig, founded upon Chjpeola ■maritinia L. (Alyssum rnaritiinum 

 Lam.), with little description, and largely by referring by number 

 to the species of Linnaeus. In 1814 Lesvaux, also of the opinion 

 that the Lamarckian Alyssum maritiinum should be separated from 

 the other Alyssums, carefully described it under the correctly 

 latinized name Lobularia. In 1826 Robert Brown revived the 

 name Koniy, modifying it to Koniya, and dedicating the genus to a 

 friend, then curator of the British Museum, whose name by a 

 strange chance was Konig (anglicized from Konig). In 1891, Prof. 

 Prantl, revising the (Jrucifenn for the }s\it. Fjianzenfamilien, wisely 

 selects as the correct designation of the genus the first properly 

 latinized name Lobularia. Now Prof. Britton takes a rather 

 singular course by pronouncing Adanson's Koniy a misprint for 

 Koniya. This action is entirely unwarranted by fact, both from 

 the circumstance that Koniy occurs in the same form several times 

 in Adanson's work, and on account of that author's well-known 



