PLANT NOMENCLATIVE : MOKE SUGGESTIONS 297 



are excluded or conserved respectively under the application of the 

 type-theory. 



In order to reach conclusions which might secure general accep- 

 tance, the fixing of generic types may well be referred to an Inter- 

 national Commission by the next Botanical Congress. A very large- 

 number of generic names which are rejected in the present lists 

 would also be rejected under the type-theory, because their types- 

 cannot be determined (hyponyms). On the other hand, there are 

 no convincing reasons why such as are definitely typified should not 

 be used. 



New York Botanic Garden. 



N. L. Britton. 



THE EAKLY HISTOBY OF PLANTS. 



The address delivered by Dr. D. H. Scott to the Botanical Section, 

 of which he was president, of the British Association at its recent 

 meeting was entitled "The Present Position of the Theory of 

 Descent, in relation to the early History of Plants " ; but his treat- 

 ment of his subject was rather two able but distinct summaries — 

 one of what he has termed "the return of pre-Darwinian chaos," 

 the other of the origin of a land flora and the evidence of it 

 afforded by Messrs. Kidston and Lang's work o.n the Devonian, 

 plants from Bhynie. While he truly remarks that "the theory 

 of Descent or Evolution is undisputed," and even that the efficacy 

 of Natural Selection in weeding out the unfit is still acknowledged 

 and is even termed a truism, he says that "a new generation! 

 has o-rown up that knows not Darwin " ; and that all ideas of 

 evolution have been disturbed or transformed since the re-discovery 

 of Mendel's work." Studiously fair in his statement, in admitting, 

 elementary species or Jordanons, " such as the countless forms of 

 Erophila verna " to be " no less- stable than Linnean species," 

 Dr. Scott seems to fail in drawing any distinction between these two. 

 grades ; hut he seldom allows himself to more than hint a personal 

 preference. When he speaks of the mutations of De Vries as sus- 

 pected of being nothing more than Mendelian segregates, or in his. 

 sympathetic statement of Lotsy's theory of evolution by hybridisa- 

 tion, we recognise his open-mindedness. It is rightly pointed out 

 that Darwin urged " the continual selection of the more tit, the pre- 

 servation of favoured races, not the mere obvious elimination of the- 

 unfit," which last (first propounded by Spencer) was, perhaps, rather,- 

 exaggerated hy Wallace ; but, whilst the conservatism natural to a, 

 veteran investigator suggests that " it may be that the theory of. 

 Natural Selection, as Darwin and Wallace understood it, may some' 

 day come into its own again," the next sentence admits " our present 

 total ignorance of variation and doubt as to other means of change," 

 so that " we can form no clear idea of the material on which Selection 

 has had to work." Dr. Scott refuses " to venture on that well-worn, 

 subject the inheritance of acquired characters " ; but in such phrases, 

 as "the whole tendency of modern work is to show that in living 

 things Heredity is supreme," he does not evince much sympathy for 

 neo-Lamarekiaus. 



