150 AMERICAN NOMENCLATURE. 



disregard for latinization. Prof. Britton takes this as an entirely 

 arbitrary expedient for setting up a name wliich would otherwise, 

 from its uncouth form, be deservedly neglected. But what must 

 be the outcome of such arbitrary actions as this ? Is nothing here 

 left to individual judgment ? How can Prof. Britton be sure that 

 Konirj is a misprint for Koniga, and not for Konii/ns, Koniijium, or 

 Koniganthm / Is it likely that other authors will agree upon this 

 point? But this is not all. If Prof. Britton may coin from an 

 unlatinized word a generic name, how may an erratic writer be 

 prevented from taking up any vernacular name from English or 

 German, Dutch or Prussian, if, having discovered its use in some 

 work of the last century, he only pronounces it a misprint, and by 

 the ready addition of an us, a, or nm, uses it to displace a later 

 generic name ? A system which upon the precedent of its chief 

 exponent permits such vagaries as this is certainly not likely to 

 have the desired stability. 



The choice of Konhja as the earliest generic name is noteworthy 

 as illustrating another point. It will be remembered that at 

 Madison special legislation was demanded and secured to establish 

 the so-called principle of priority by position, according to which, 

 if two genera or two species are published in the same work, and 

 subsequently united, the name standing first in the book is the 

 authorized one, there being no difference in the time of publication. 

 Now, although Konig is used on the 420th page of Adanson's work 

 to designate the sweet alyssum, that author states in an erratum 

 that the reader is to substitute for Koniij, Aduseton, A radical 

 reformer might, it is true, refuse to Adauson the right to take back 

 a name once published, but the peculiar feature of this case is that 

 the errata of this work, while doubtless written after its completion, 

 have been uniformly bound in front of the regularly numbered 

 pages ; at least such is the case in the three copies of the work 

 accessible to the writer. Thus Adanson's correction, advocating 

 Aduseton, has many pages of what Prof. Britton has termed priority 

 of position over the description of Konig. 



The case is interesting merely as a good instance of many in 

 which zeal in searching for the earliest designation leads to the 

 consideration of names so involved that several interpretations are 

 equally possible. In passing it may also be noted that Prof. 

 Britten's Koniga maritima is long antedated by the same com- 

 bination by Robert Brown, a writer whose works the reforming 

 botanists can scarcely afford to overlook. 



It will be generally admitted that a system of nomenclature is 

 unsatisfactory in which the botanist who characterises and names 

 a new species with all due care that he is not duplicating an 

 existing name, nevertheless cannot be at all sure but that the 

 name so carefully chosen may at once be displaced through no 

 fault of his. Yet such is the case under the Eochester and 

 Madison rules. When Nuttall made the combination Chrgsnpsis 

 pilosa, it was a new binomial applied to a good new species 

 evidently belonging to the genus under which it was placed, and 

 never before described in this or any other genus. Can any author 



