FIRST RECORDS OF BRITISH FLOWERING PLANTS. 149 



load comes second. It does not seem to have occurred to Mr. 

 Clarke that some inconvenience might arise if every comitry had 

 its own nomenclature ; and it is a little hard on Crantz, foreigner 

 tliough he was, that he should not be credited with the species 

 which he was the first to diagnose. But what will Mr. Clarke 

 say when he discovers that even Mr. Jackson — who affords him 

 "some consolation" as having "in many instances retained a 

 well-established name notwithstanding the existence of an earlier 

 one " — places li. hirsutus as a synonym of it', sardous ? 



A more pathetic instance follows. "We have quite lately most 

 unfortunately lost an excellent" — here the unbidden tear rises, but 

 it is not a dear friend, only a name (to which, indeed, even dear 

 friends are often reduced in the lapse of years) — "an excellent 

 name, C'are.v glauca of Scopoli." One wonders how Mr. Clarke 

 would record the loss of a plant, if the disappearance of a name 

 awakens such a threnody. But he mingles a manly indignation 

 with his tears. Why was this outrage perpetrated ? "Because, 

 forsooth " — an expression of scorn used with deadly effect by the 

 late Mr. Martin Tupper in one of his spirited denunciations of the 

 Anglican hierarchy — " Schreber one year earlier gave the plant the 

 much inferior name C. flacca.'" Mr. Clarke goes on to show that, 

 half a century ago, C. recurva "had the cry," and that Sir J. E. 

 Smith, noting that the name Jlacca was "most prevalent on the 

 Continent" — these foreigners will do anything! — says that he 

 might have restored it; "but as Willdenow has sanctioned recurva, 

 this name, being in itself unexceptionable, may as well remain." It 

 is a little unkind of Mr. Clarke to say that Smith's "reasoning is 

 not very conclusive," especially as it is indistinguishable from Mr. 

 Clarke's own. But the moral is plain. If Smith had restored 

 flacca, Mr. Clarke's feelings would have been spared, and Babing- 

 ton would not have reintroduced Scopoli's later name glauca, — a 

 restoration which, apparently because it happened so long ago, 

 meets with Mr. Clarke's approval, — "I entirely fail," he says, "to 

 see any good reason for its being disturbed." So might those who 

 knew and loved recurva have said in their day, ere the rude hand 

 of a Babiugtou thrust her from her throne ; but the botanists of 

 that less emotional period seem to have viewed the substitution 

 with callous indifference, and to have adopted it without a pang. 



"Thus bad begins," — and continues, — "but worse remains 

 behind." " The last edition of the London Catalogue contains several 

 instances of changes as bad or worse," and — rien nest sacre pour 

 un sapeur — even Capsella Bursa -pastoris, as well as Mr. Clarke, is 

 "upset '■ ! "How sad and mad and bad" it all is! Mr. Clarke 

 sees no hope for the future save in an appeal to "British botanists" 

 to " protest against such changes being made." Judging from the 

 response — or want of it — to Mr. Marshall's similar appeal,* I fear 

 British botanists are not easily moved ; but, as on the former 

 occasion, I gladly give publicity to Mr. Clarke's call to arms. 

 Those who agree with him " are mostly of the quiet and long- 



• Journ. Bot. 1895, 229. 



