162 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



they first realized that when the Kew Index said such a species equaled 

 such other species it was not necessarily so. For all its shortcomings, 

 however, the Index Kewensis, with its successive supplements, affords 

 an invaluable index to names and places of publication (its references 

 to synonymy may be disregarded), and serves more than any other one 

 thing to make possible serious work looking toward a final uniformity 

 and stability of nomenclature, so far as that is humanly possible of 

 attainment. 



Until about twenty-five years ago there had been no concerted effort 

 to bring about conformity in nomenclature. A center of great botanical 

 activity, like Kew, rather expected its usage to be followed out of 

 respect for authority, and it was so followed in the United States. 

 Paris and Berlin, the other great centers of activity, went their separate 

 ways. 



The need of reform at last became so pressing that several botanical 

 revolutions broke out, each bent on establishing a "stable nomencla- 

 ture." At about the same time there was published the Pflanzen- 

 familien, by Engler and Prantl, which gave the families and genera in 

 a new order, beginning with the most simply organized plants and end- 

 ing with the most highly specialized, expressing, so far as possible in 

 a lineal secjuence. the evolution of plant life. This sequence agreed 

 with the current viewpoint so much better than that followed by 

 Bentham and Hooker in their Genera Plantarum, which began with 

 Ranunculacese. ascended to Compositas. and then descended again to 

 I sedges and grasses, that it found wide acceptance and gave advantage 

 to the nomenclature used. There was a fairly general desire to base 

 nomenclature upon priority. The Engler and Prantl, or Berlin, nomen- 

 clature was based on priority, with, however, a good many exceptions 

 (most of these exceptions were later embodied in the list of Nomina 

 Conservanda of the Vienna Code — that is. names to be conserved, re- 

 gardless of priority) ; but many botanists believed that only by a strict 

 adherence to priority could stability be attained. Another source of 

 nomenclatorial diversity was the idea of basing each genus on a type 

 species. This was America's contribution to the problem, and though 

 it has brought about some troublesome changes of name, such as the 

 restoration of the name Holciis to the sorghums, it. together with 

 adherence to priority, promises to be the means of bringing about 

 eventually a uniform nomenclature, so far as that is humanly possible. 



