•US THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



Perral'leria and Epimedium Perralderianum), and Olivier was 

 latinized as Oliverius (cf. Oliver ia). 



The generic names Plitmeria, Gaiiltheria, Perralderia, Oliveria 

 are not formed in accordance with the particular convention recom- 

 mended in the Vienna Code, but they contain no typographic or 

 orthographic errors, and should therefore be preserved unchanged in 

 spite of the fact that they have been modified to Plumiera (by 

 Linnaeus, who afterwards adopted the spelling Plumeria), Gaulthiera 

 (by Keichenbach), and Oliviera (by D. Dietrich). 



The rubiaceous genus Valantia affords a parallel instance. 

 Toarnefort dedicated it to Vaillant, whose name he latinized »as 

 Valantius. Strictly speaking, Valentia would have been the correct 

 Latin form, but Tournefort chose Valantia as being a nearer approxi- 

 mation to Vaillant. Grleditsch altered the spelling to Vaillantia in 

 1751, but in 1764 (Syst. 1(53, n. 664) accepted the form Valantia, 

 which had been adopted by Linnaeus. According to the Vienna Code 

 the alteration of Valantia to Vaillantia is unwarranted. 



Names of Creek origin in which an aspirate has been omitted 

 present more difficulty. In the cases of Creek words commencing 

 with p it is perhaps desirable to insert the h, where it has been 

 omitted : thus Rynchospora, Ryssopterys, and RytidopTiyllum have 

 been altered to Rhynchospora, Rhyssopteryx, and Rhytidophyllum 

 respectively {vide Dalle Torre et Harms, Cen. Siphonog. nn. -192, 

 4222, 7892). 



Names incorrectly formed from Creek words commencing with e 

 or (/ are especially troublesome. If Eleocharis is to be altered to 

 Heleocharis, as recommended by Dalle Torre and Harms, surely 

 EI odea should become Helodea, as proposed by Keichenbach in 1841 

 and adopted by Ascherson and Graebner in 1897, and Hypericum 

 Elodes should be H. Helodes, as suggested by Saint-Lager in 1880. 

 The correction of all badly-formed generic names would lead, how- 

 ever, to some curious results: thus if Wittstein (Handworterb. ed. 2, 

 314, 122; 1850) was right in deriving Edosmia Nutt and Hedeoma 

 Pers. from ijdus and oafx-rj, the correct forms of these generic names 

 would he Hedyosmia and Hedyosma, respectively, which would be 

 liable to be confused with each other and with Hedyosmum Sw. 



The degree to which orthographic correction should be carried is 

 left in the Vienna Code to the discretion of the individual botanist 

 (Art. 57 and Rec. XXX.). The result is that botanists who attach 

 importance to linguistic purity will introduce or accept orthographic 

 changes which will be rejected by others who have regard solely 

 to convenience. It is a choice of two evils : whether to retain a 

 badly-formed name, or to correct it and thus alter its position in 

 an index; in the latter case it is apt to be overlooked until the 

 change has become familiar. Questions of this kind might usefully 

 be referred to a small international committee which should publish 

 a report on them prior to the next International Botanical Congress. 



A convention which is observed by some botanists is to replace an 

 initial i by j whenever it is followed by a vowel. Thus Dalle Torre 

 and Harms changed lodes Blume into Jodes ; they attributed the 

 spelling Joedes to Blume, having mistaken the sign of diaeresis for 



