116 



BOTANICAL NOMENCLATURE. 



of names, it is customary to select the earliest published. I agree, 

 however, with the late Sereno Watson* that "there is nothing 

 whatever of an ethical character inherent in a name, through any 

 priority of publication oi- position, which should render it morally 

 obligatory upon anyone to accept one name rather than another." 

 And in point of fact Linnaeus and the early systematists attached 

 little importance to priority. The rigid application of the principle 

 involves the assumption that all persons who describe or attempt to 

 describe plants are equally competent to the task. But this is so 

 far from being the case that it is sometimes all but impossible even 

 to guess what could possibly have been meant, f 



In 1872 Sir Joseph Hooker |: wrote : " The number of species 

 described by authors who cannot determine their affinities increases 

 annually, and I regard the naturalist who puts a described plant 

 into its proper position in regard to its allies as rendering a greater 

 service to science than its describer when he either puts it into a 

 wrong place or throws it into any of those chaotic heaps, miscalled 

 genera, with which systematic works still abound." This has 

 always seemed to me not merely sound sense, but a scientific way 

 of treating the matter. What we want in nomenclature is the 

 maximum amount of stability and the minimum amount of change 

 compatible with progress in perfecting our taxonomic system. 

 Nomenclature is a means, not a end. There are perhaps 160,000 

 species of flowering plants in existence. What we want to do is to 

 push on the task of getting them named and described in an 

 intelligible manner, and their affinities determined as correctly as 

 possible. We shall then have material for dealing with the larger 

 problems which the vegetation of our globe will present when 

 treated as a whole. To me the botanists who waste their time over 

 priority are like boys who, when sent on an errand, spend their 

 time in playing by the roadside. By such men even Linnaeus is not 

 to be allowed to decide his own names. To one of the most 

 splendid ornaments of our gardens he gave the name of Magnolia 

 grandiflora : this is now to be known as Magnolia fcetida. The 

 reformer himself is constrained to admit, " The change is a most 

 unfortunate one in every way." § It is difficult to see what is gained 

 by making it, except to render systematic botany ridiculous. The 

 genus Aspidium, known to every fern-cultivator, was founded by 

 Swartz. It now contains some 400 species, of which the vast 

 majority were of course unknown to him at the time; yet the names 

 of all these are to be changed because Adanson founded a genus, 

 Dryopteris, which seems to be the same thing as Asjudiutn. What, 

 it may be asked, is gained by the change ? To science it is certainly 



* Nature, xlvii. 54. 



t Darwin, who always seems to me, almost instinctively, to take the right 

 view in matters relating to natural history, is {Life, vol. i. p. 364) dead against 

 the new "practice of naturalists appending for perpetuity the name of the ^first 

 describer to species." He is equally against the priority craze : — " I cannot yet 

 bring myself to reject very ivell-knoivn names " (ibid. p. 369). 



I Flora of British India, i. vii. § Garden and Forest, ii. 61.'>. 



