260 BOTANICAL NOMENCLATURE. 



BOTANICAL NOMENCLATUEE. 



By William Mathews, M.A. 



It has recently been my misfortune to collate several catalogues 

 of plants for the purpose of comparing the vegetation of the 

 countries to which they refer. One cannot engage in such an 

 undertaking without being painfully impressetl by the confusion 

 which exists in botanical nomenclature and in the practice of 

 citing authorities, and of the necessity for a reform in both parti- 

 culars, I venture therefore to say a few words upon a question 

 which has lately been discussed in the pages of this Journal. 



The authority wdiich is attached to the name of an organic form 

 may be regarded from one of two points of view — 1st, as referring 

 to the collocation of the two members of the double name, i. e., of 

 the left hand or generic, and of the right hand or specific member ; 

 2ndly, as referring to the right hand or specific member only. 

 The former practice has hitherto prevailed among botanists, the 

 latter among zoologists. There is no a priori reason in the nature 

 of things wh}^ the one convention is preferable to the other. It is 

 shnpl}" a matter of convenience, and the question is, on which side 

 does the balance of convenience lie ? It is evident that there ought 

 not to be two rules, the one for the vegetable, the other for the 

 animal kingdom. 



It follows from the second or zoological rule that the oldest 

 specific name has the right of priority, and that it carries with it 

 the initials of the author, however various the genera in which the 

 organism may have been placed by the vagaries of subsequent 

 describers. An exception may of course arise if the oldest specific 

 name has a manifest impropriety in a new connection. 



If the botanists who speak of this as "a new rule" will refer to 

 a catalogue of shells, they will find the old Linn^an genus Venus 

 now subdivided into many genera, one of which is djjirina of 

 Lamarck ; but they will see the old Venus islandica of Linnaeus 

 described as Cyprina islandica, Linn., not Cyprina islandica, Lam. 

 (Forbes & Hanley, ' British MoUusca,' vol. i. p. 441). 



Or take a catalogue of insects (I have before me both editions 

 of Staudinger's ' Lepidoptera of Em-ope'), and tmii to the old 

 Linnasan genus Papilio. The Peacock Butterfly, now placed in 

 the genus Vanessa of Fabricius, stands as Vanessa lo, Linn., not 

 Vanessa lo, Fab. ; and so on to the end of the chapter. A difliculty 

 arises when an author makes an existing specific name the name 

 of a new genus. Thus Fabricius changes the name of the Goat 

 Moth, Ijouiby.r Cossu.s, Linn., into Cossns liyniperda. In the first 

 edition of his ' Catalogue' (1861) Staudinger gives Cossns liyniperda, 

 Fab., but in the second (1871) he boldly reduplicates the earliest 

 specific name, and writes Cossns Cossns, Linn. 



The zoological rule has great advantages. It saves us from a 

 host of useless authorities, and w^orsc than useless synonyms ; it 

 ensures that the name of the first describer shall generally, if not 



