ON A POINT IN BOTANICAL NOMENCLATURE. 171 



less veneration for names " sanctioned by the general agreement 

 of modern writers of authority " than Mr. Ball would accord. 



But it appears to me that a rule does exist, and has been acted 

 upon by most systematists from Linnaeus downwards, — certainly 

 by many more than have accepted the Paris " Law " of 1867. It 

 is, indeed, with the object of putting forward more prominently 

 than has yet been done in this discussion the practice so generally 

 followed for many years, and to advocate the framing of a fixed 

 rule founded upon it, that I have ventured to enter on this con- 

 troversy again. This practice is, to employ the earliest published 

 name the generic half of which is the name of the genus adopted, 

 and thus to avoid making a new name by the resuscitation of the 

 specific half of an older combination. It would be very easy 

 to show, from the writings of the best systematic botanists, that 

 this is the principle they recognize, though it has never been formu- 

 lated into a distinct law.* This, however, could be readily done ; 

 ,it would be fully as clear and definite as the new rule advocated by 

 Mr. Ball, and would possess the great advantage of not much dis- 

 turbing the existing state of things. 



For, indeed, the amount of change and the number of new 

 names which would follow the proper and legitimate carrying out 

 of the new rule would be very great ; and it is no doubt the con- 

 sciousness of this which has led Mr. Ball to stipulate beforehand 

 that it is not to interfere with "names sanctioned by general agree- 

 ment." But we may well demur to introducing a new law intended to 

 bring about uniformity in nomenclatm-e, coupled with an exception 

 from its influence caj)able of almost indefinite extension, and which 

 everybody would interpret for himself. If the law is a judicious 

 one, let it be fahiy and thoroughly carried out, with only the weU- 

 known and generally recognized grounds of exception ; but do not 

 let us introduce such an element of confusion as what is to be held 

 to constitute "general agreement," and who are to be considered 

 " modern writers of authority." 



I have purposely avoided saying anything about the "authority" 

 following a name, because, in my oi3inion, this is a matter which 

 should be left wholly out of consideration in this connexion. 

 Whether the name which wiU have necessarily to be appended to 

 the combination adopted be that of the discoverer or first describer 

 of the species or not, in no way enters into the question at issue ; 

 nothing more is indicated by the author's name than that he first 

 duly published the combination and that it is used in the same 

 sense as that in w^hich he employed it. But it seems to be thought 

 by some botanists that the appended authority ought in some way 

 to be the name of the original describer, by a kind of right. So 

 Btrongly has this been felt by some, that the idea has been extended 



* Cryptogaiuists, however, ought perhaps to be excepted. Bentham states 

 (Fl. Austral, vii. (1878), p. 699) that " the genera m Ferns have been thrown 

 into such confusion and uncertainty that pteridologists acknowledge a right of 

 priority in specific names, whatever may have been the genus under which they 

 may have been first published." 



