﻿100 Le Jolis-Howe : Porella once more 



for the original species are not far to seek and from these we may 

 pass to any shade of inappropriateness. 



The identity of the species to which Linnaeus applied the bino- 

 mial Porella pinnata, without ever seeing it himself, will, I think, 

 hardly be called in question, and knowing the species we also 

 know its genus, even though the generic diagnosis can never be 

 completed and properly restricted until all the species of the 

 group in the world are accurately known. Knowing the single 

 species to which the generic name Porella was applied by Dillenius 

 (copied by Linnaeus), and knowing, too, by tradition or otherwise, 

 the three species to which Dumortier in 1822 (with an unmeaning 

 8-word diagnosis) applied the generic name Madotheca> we are 

 agreed that the four species are congeneric. Our main point of 

 difference, then, is over the question whether the Dillenian and 

 Linnaean name, which has claimed a goodly number of partisans 

 in recent years, shall stand, or the name introduced by Dumortier 

 some seventy or eighty years later — a question concerning which 

 men equally honest, equally thorough-going and equally " scien- 

 tific," may doubtless differ. Personally, believing that a rigorous 

 application of the priority principle gives promise of the best final 

 solution of our nomenclatural difficulties, I cannot do otherwise 

 than to adhere to the name Porella. 



If Dillenius had Porella pinnata also under « Lichenastrum 

 filicinum pennatum " on a later page of the Historia, as seems 

 well attested, this fact would have no special bearing on the point 

 at issue, for " Lichenastrum " does not appear as a genus on the 

 pages of Linnaeus; and Linnaeus, not Dillenius, is our starting 



Prodromus and is generally used. 



GALAX L. « Name from yala, milk, of no conceivable application to the plant n 

 [Asa Gray]. Yet it is adopted in Engler and Prantl, Nat. Pfl. Fam., and is in gen- 

 eral use; and the only known species is Galax aphylla L., of which Linnaeus never 

 wrote one word of his own in the way of specific description. Moreover, the leaves of 

 Galax aphylla are the most conspicuous part of the plant. In this case we have a 

 specific name that is positively false ("a mere blunder" of Linnaeus!), a generic 

 name that is certainly misleading, and a species which Linnaeus never formally de- 

 fined, yet " Galax aphylla L." is maintained by every one ! 



Chamaelirium Willd. (Name from x^ a h on *&* ground, and Aeipiov, lily.) 

 Plant 1/^-4 feet tall. "Genus founded on a dwarf undeveloped specimen." In 

 Engler and Prantl, Nat. Pfl. Fam., and generally used. 



This list of more or less grossly inappropriate names might be widely extended. 



