﻿Le Jolis-Howe: Porella once more 99 



i 



the identity of the group is recognizable only by the familiar form 

 of the three specific names that he mentions.* He does not even 

 state where these names may be found in the works of his prede- 

 cessors. Moreover, « Madotheca " is placed in his Tribe? I., the 

 Lejeuniaceae, the members of which have the following charac- 

 ter : "Theca pellucida univalvis quadridentata." But the " theca" 

 of his Madotheca is no more pellucid than in some members of his 

 Tribe II. (Jungermanniaceae), in which this organ is said to be 

 coriaceous, the theca is not itnivalved, and it is not quadriden- 

 tate in any modern sense of the term. It is true that Dumortier 

 improved considerably upon this diagnosis nine years later, yet 

 the name owes its worth chiefly to the emendations of Nees von 

 Esenbeck ; and Porella, it must be confessed, owes very much to 

 the emendations of S. CX Lindberg. 



It cannot be disputed that the name Porella was given througl 

 a wrong understanding of some of the characters of the plant. 

 Yet if generic or specific names are to be rejected simply because 

 they are inappropriate or embody misconceptions, where are we 

 to stop ? Under this method of procedure, every writer may con- 

 sult his own tastes and caprices as to the aptness of a name, as 

 the past history of taxonomy has abundantly demonstrated. 

 Commonly used and " classical " generic names f that were 

 founded on wrong ideas or that are false and misleading except 



' ■ — ^ - " ■ ■ ■ — — ■ 



lobed, thorny-toothed; upper lobes largest, rounded ovate, lower strap-shape, fiat 

 pressed close; stipules oblong, 4-sided, thorny-toothed. 



"Jungermannia laevigata Schrad. Samml. 2, 6; Hooker Jung. 35. 



" On the ground in mountain woods." 



If this hepaticological work of S. F. Gray was mere compilation, as has been 

 alleged, it was a much more intelligible compilation, on the whole, than that of Du- 

 mortier in his Commentationes Botanicae. About the only part of the above descrip- 

 tion that can be considered positively wrong is the attributing of a monoicous charac- 

 ter to the genus, while both the species on which it is based are now uniformly de- 

 scribed by systematists as dioicous. Yet a modern morphological investigator writes : 

 11 Les Madotheca sont monoiques, on trouve les deux especes d'organes de reproduc- 

 tion dans la m£me inflorescence (Fig. 52, PI. IX.)! " [L.-A. Gayet, L' Archegone 

 chez les Muscinees, Ann. Sci. Nat. Bot. VIII. 3: '99- i 8 97-] 



Bellinxinia and Antoiria of Raddi are also older than Madotheca and no one 

 doubts their meaning. 



See remarks of Richard Spruce on Dumortier's genera. [On Cephalozia, 1.] 

 f Eulophus Nutt. (ei', Will, and /ocpoc, a crest) " is not well applied," says Asa 

 C *ay,«tti a plant with no crest at all." Vet the name appears in De Candolle's 



