2 7 2 The Botanical Gazette. [September. 



OPEN LETTERS. 



What name shall be used? What is an authority? 



If a worker in the botanical vineyard who has neither right nor claim 

 to the title of " Systematic Botanist," may be permitted to ask a ques- 

 tion concerning the proper nomenclature of seed-plants, perhaps a 

 little illumination may be graciously let into his unsystematic brain-box 

 by some of those who not only claim the title, but wear it right 

 royally. The question is a brief one : 



If we are not to use the oldest attainable specific name for a plant, 

 what specific name are we to use ? 



Certainly we can not use the " oldest binomial," for our notions of a 

 genus, and its inclusions are constantly changing. Nor is it particu- 

 larly helpful to suggest that the name sanctioned by " authority " is 

 the proper one, for after all — and I speak with bated breath, as one 

 treading on holy ground — who is this " authority " anyhow ? Is it the 

 first worker m a group or the last ? Is it the dead or the living ? Is 

 it this institution or is it that ? Or is it the consensus of workers 

 along some line ? I, for one, have always supposed that attempts to 

 constitute one's self, or one's descendants, or one's co-workers a 

 botanical, zoological, geological or petrographical hierarchy was, to 

 say the least, unscientific. If great groups of humble workers — such 

 as those who gain a little cheap notoriety by trying as best they may to 

 get together a local flora in which the results of their best biblio- 

 graphical and analytic ability are collected — are to be decapitated at 

 one fell blow, it is important to have it understood just why they are 

 disposed of and just who volunteers to pull the guillotine-lever. 



I here is such a constantly increasing number of young, misguided 

 enthusiasts among the group which we may for convenience call the 



botanists of North America," that something more than reading the 

 not-act will he necessary to convince them that, after all is said, the 

 temper ot Charles Darwin is not a pretty fair one to try to imitate. 

 Consequently they will doubtless continue to struggle along, doing the 

 best they can. differing from « the authority" when they honestly have 

 to ditter. submitting their efforts to the test of time and the correction 

 Ot wider and abler research, receiving honest criticism with what grace 

 human nature permits and, withal, meaning no affront, personal or 



otherwise, to the authorities with whom they cheaply differ. 

 On the whole this second question troubles the writer as well as the 



CovwaVmT 55 " res ) ,ectfull y asked. « What is an authority ?" 

 Conwa\ MAcM.r.LAN, University of Minnesota 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



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