128 NOTES ON PENTAS. 



sent from the Banksian Herbarium, such names being still un- 

 published : and it is not always easy of prevention. Such instances 

 as those under notice are, of course, preventible enough : no plants 

 should be distributed with MS. names unless their publication is 

 imminent, and even then the practice is of doubtful expediency. 

 But if a collector is naming his plants from a herbarium, he can 

 hardly be blamed if he assumes that the names he finds therein 

 have been duly published ; and in all probability he will distribute 

 specimens bearing these names, as was done by Mr. Elliot in the 

 case of his Sierra Leone collections. The mischief does not end 

 here. The collector's identification may be, and often is, hasty ; 

 and it may well happen that the plant he distributes as x of Jones, 

 may prove to be y of Smith, or z of some future monographer. The 

 name x may in this way have been disposed of before its author has 

 put it into circulation, and may have been identified with another 

 species to which the true x bears only a superficial resemblance. 



This presents one aspect of the inconveniences which have been 

 caused by the long delay which has taken place in the continuation 

 of the Tropical African and Cape Floras. Some orders were mono- 

 graphed for the latter of these works as much as twenty years ago ; 

 while a very large number of specimens at Kew and elsewhere are 

 named in accordance with descriptions which have not yet seen the 

 light, and are, so far as we can judge, in no immediate likelihood 

 of doing so. But workers at Kew — Mr. Elliot himself, for example 

 — have matched their plants with these unpublished species, and 

 have then distributed them with the MS. names borne by the latter. 

 In this way a certain proportion of these nomina nuda have found 

 their way into circulation ; but the plants bearing them may at any 

 moment be published by other workers under different names,* 

 which of course will take precedence over the MS. nomenclature. 



I have the less hesitation in speaking strongly on this subject, 

 because I myself fall to some extent under the criticism I am 

 offering. In 1893, when working at Whyte's Mlanji plants, Mr. 

 Baker, with characteristic generosity, allowed me access to his 

 unpublished monograph of the African species of Plectranthus. 

 Among Whyte's specimens was a plant clearly identical with one of 

 Mr. Baker's novelties ; and as at that time one of the many state- 

 ments as to the imminence of a continuation of the Tropical African 

 Flora was in circulation, I entered the plant on my list as " P. man- 

 f/anyeiisis Baker in Oliver, Fl. Trop. Afr. iv. ined.," and it so appears 

 in Trans. Linn. Soc. ser. 2, iv. 37 (1894). Ordinary courtesy 

 demanded no less ; but, should some other botanists describe the 

 same plant under another name, I imagine that Mr. Baker's nomen 

 malum will not stand. 



Mr. Elliot's fifth species, "P. lanceolata K. Schum. MSS.," 

 appears to afford another instance of a previously unpublished 

 name, but it is rather an example of carelessness of citation and 

 imperfect understanding of synonymy. The name should certainly 

 not be cited from any "MSS.," for it occurs on the very page of 



* See Journ. Bot. 1894, 84-86, for examples of this. 



