NOTICES OF BOOKS AND MEMOIRS. 47 



opportunity of entering a strong protest. I mean that of creating a 

 new name in order to combine an old specific with a new generic 

 one. In ferns, the wanton multiplication of ill-defined or un- 

 definable genera, according to the varied fancies of special botanists, 

 has had the effect of placing the same species successively 

 in several, sometimes seven or eight, different genera ; and it is 

 proposed to maintain for the specific appellation the right of 

 priority, not in the genus alone in which it is placed, but in the 

 whole of the genera to which, rightly or wrongly, it has been 

 referred. This has been carried to such a degree as to give to the 

 specific name a general substantive aspect, as if the generic ones 

 were mere adjuncts — a serious encroachment on the beautiful 

 simplicity of the Linneau nomenclature ; and it is to be feared 

 that there is a tendency in that direction in phaenogamic botany. 

 When a botanist dismembers an old genus, rule 57 requires that 

 he should strictly preserve the old specific names in his new 

 genera ; and when he has wantonly and knowingly neglected this 

 rule it may be right to correct him. But where a botanist has 

 established what he believes to be a new species, and has there- 

 fore given it a new name, the changing this name after it has 

 got into general chculation, because it has been discovered that 

 some other botanist had previously published it in a wrong genus, 

 is only adding a synonym without any advantage whatever, and 

 is not even restoring an old name ; for the specific adjective is not 

 of itself the name of a plant. Ask a seedsman for some Canari- 

 ensis and he will probably give you Tropaohim i^eregrinum, not 

 Phalaris canariensis. A generic name is sufficiently indicated by 

 one substantive, for no two genera in the vegetable kingdom are 

 allowed to have the same name ; but for a species the combina- 

 tion of the substantive and adjective is absolutely necessary, the 

 two-worded specific name is one and indivisible ; and the com- 

 bining the substantive of one name with the adjective of another 

 is not preserving either of them, but creates an absolutely new 

 name, which ought not to stand unless the previous ones were 

 vicious in themselves, or preoccupied, or referred to a wi'ong 

 genus. It is probably from not perceiving the difference between 

 making and changing a name that the practice objected to has been 

 adopted by some of the first among recent botanists, such as Wed- 

 dell, though imder protest (see the note in DC, Prod. xvii. 1, 73). 

 To give a couple of instances among hundreds that have lately pre- 

 sented themselves to me : Wight published a Nilgherry plant which 

 he believed to be new, and was certainly a new genus, under the 

 name of Chamahainia cuspidata, in all respects a legitimate name ; 

 and he could not be expected to identify it wuth Urtica squamigera 

 of Wallich's ' Catalogue,' as the plant is not an Urtica. Wight's 

 name was therefore adopted in Weddell's excellent monograph ; 

 but in the ' Prodromus ' he thought himself obliged, in spite of 

 his better sense, to call it Chamahainia squamigera, which is neither 

 Wallich's faulty name nor Wight's correct one, but an entirely 

 new name, to be rejected by the law of priority, which requires 

 the adoption of the oldest correct name. So, again, an Indian 



