4(3 NOTICES OF BOOKS AND MEMOIRS. 



MatJiiola tristis, &c. can lead to no mistake. But it so frequently 

 liai^pens that diiferent authors have given the same name 

 to different plants, that the addition of a third word (the 

 abbreviated name of the author) has become indispensable in 

 some instances, and advisable in most cases, to avoid uncertainty, 

 but for vo other object. Although much credit may be due to the 

 collector or botanist who has discovered or distinguished really 

 new species (and it is but fair that their discovery should be com- 

 memorated), yet it is only second-rate botanists who pride 

 themselves on the number of names, good or bad, to which their 

 initials can be attached. In all cases, therefore, where the object 

 is only to speak of a plant, as in catalogues, references, physiolo- 

 gical treatises, or even local Floras, for practical use one cannot 

 attend too closely to the observations of De Candolle (' Lois,' 

 p. 52 ; Engl. edit. p. 68) and say Mathiola tristis or Mathiola 

 tristis, Br., without any addition (such as Linn., sub Hesperide), 

 explanatory of the history of the name. Such a history, abso- 

 lutely necessary in a full monograph for instance, should always 

 be considered as belonging to the description and history of the 

 species, not as forming part of its name. It is also with sincere 

 regret that we see distinguished botanists endeavouring to combine 

 rejected with adopted names by the obviously false nomenclature 

 exemplified in Mathiola tristis, Linn. 



5:< ;!; >;< * iij 



" We have made it a rule in our ' Genera Plantarum' to yield 

 no right of priority to ante-Linuean names, i. e. those pubUshed 

 before the adoption of the Linnean system of nomenclature. If 

 once we give this right to Tournefort or Rumphius there is no 

 reason for not going back to Bauhin or Clusius, or even to Pliny 

 or Dioscorides, to the utter confusion of all synonymy. Linnaeus, 

 by the establishment of the bmomial nomenclature, made an 

 epoch in the study of systematic botany ; and it is by far the 

 most conducive to the facility of that study (the great object 

 of nomenclature) to give up all search after previous names, and 

 take all genera as adopted by him or satisfactorily modified by 

 subsequent botanists. We therefore cannot, for instance, give 

 Patrick Browne the precedence over Linnaeus in the case of Adelia, 

 as proposed by Mueller. Browne's first edition was ante-Linnean. 

 He there gave the name of Adelia, not to a genus, but to a 

 plant which afterwards entered into the genus to which Michaux 

 gave the name of Adelia, but only after this name had been 

 appropriated by Linnaeus to a different genus ; and I can see no 

 sufficient excuse for the great disturbance resulting from the 

 replacing Linnaeus's Adelia by the new name FdcineUa in order to 

 restore the jpost-Linnean name Adelia to the Forest iera of Poiret or 

 Adelia of Michaux. 



5;= * * * * 



** The question of specific nomenclature is not directly connected 

 with a ' Genera Plantarum ;' but there is one practice which has 

 grown up of late years, adding largely to the number of useless 

 synonyms, against which I cannot refrain from taking this 



