l8 9i-] Open Letters. 215 



OPEN LETTERS. 

 The Manchester group of botanists. 



A photograph of twenty-five botanists was shown at the Indian- 

 apolis meeting of the A. A. A, S. and a number of persons expressed 

 a desire to obtain copies of it: As an accommodation to those who 

 may wish a copy, I will send an order to the photographer for as many 

 is are wanted, and distribute them upon their arrival. 



The group was taken at Manchester, England; in 1886, and was the 

 company who gathered at the hospitable home of Prof. Williamson to 

 do honor to the visit of Dr. Asa Gray. All departments of botanical 

 science were represented. The group embraces: Messrs. McNab, 

 lessen, Treub, Solms-Laubach, Weissmann, Saporta, Baker, Lankester, 

 D'Arcy Thompson, Dyer, Cohn, De Bary, Williamson, Asa Gray, 

 Pnngsheim, Carruthers, Gardiner, Oliver, Vines, Marshall Ward, C. 

 Bailey, Balfour, Bower, Potter and Vaizey. The picture is 10 by 12 

 inches, and an excellent portrait of each "individual. The price will 

 be si. 35 unmounted or $1.75 mounted on a neat card 14 by 16 inches 

 and the names written underneath. Those wishing copies will please 

 send in their names as early as possible.— J. C. Arthur, La Fayette, 



hid. 



Monomialism. 



I like the tone of the editorial in the May Gazette upon nomen- 

 clature. The propagators of this new fashion of naming plants are so 

 confident of suceess^and have so often predicted that the whole botani- 

 cal world must make unconditional surrender, that I hasten to express 

 my own feeling in the matter before my guns are spiked and my arms 

 confiscated. 



I suppose that the object of a name is to afford some ready anc 

 tolerably permanent means of designating a particular plant And we 

 have always been taught that it is no part of any system of nomenclature 

 to give credit to any person. An author's name is attached to am 

 plant for the simple purpose of identifying the plant name and we are 

 also taught that the oldest name of any plant must stand. In order to 

 meet these various requirements, botanists have been m the I !>it — 

 erroneously, it now turns out — of employing two words to designate 

 the plant, and this has been known as the binomial system of nomen 

 clature. But now they are telling us that these two words do not con- 

 stitute the name of the plant, but that the name, per se. is the second 

 word of the two. In other word-, saeeharinum is the name of the 

 Sugar maple, Canadensis is the name of a Cornus— although one of niv 

 botanies declares that it is the name of a rush and even of a spruce -~ 

 and that repens is the name of white clover. This is the monomial 

 S) tern of nomenclature, and its devotee- are delving thro h even 

 author in the hope of finding the name of the plant. When this name 

 1 found— or supposed to be found, which amounts to the same thi l 

 -it is attached to some generic name to which it was never de rocd 

 to fit. and the twain, to which an algebraic formula has been attached, 

 ls given to the world as the mon mto-binomial name of the plant 

 . Now there is onlv one reason why I object to all this, and it 

 that it serves no pur] se. It adds nothing to the stability of the name 



