should apply for all time and in all langnag-es. The writer has 

 found some 150 species and genera described far better in San- 

 scrit than most of those of Linnaeus. The English language 

 is full of well described species and genera which have as miich 

 right to recognition as any others in the Latin language which 

 were published long before the present Latin combinations 

 were made. If it is contended that the common terms are not 

 Lntin we can easily follow the lead of Britton and put a Latin 

 tail on them (a la Manihota Britton for Manihot). In that 

 case we would have such very attractive combinations as the 

 following: sagebrushum tridentatum, Brittonastrum tumble- 

 weedum, Greenella slipperyelma, Rydbergioaella bitterroota, 

 Covilla creosotebusha, Nelsonella greasewooda, etc. These 

 would be fully as euphonious as some of the recent combina- 

 tions and far more expressive, and would not stretch the great 

 rule of priority to the snapping point. The sensible rule adopt- 

 ed by botanists (with this one exception) is to take 1753 as 

 the starting point for species and to recognize any proper and 

 some improper Latin combinations for species in each genus 

 if accompanied by a description however short, following prior- 

 ity within the genus. This prevents all the names injected 

 into genera by the Brittonian rule which requires the upset- 

 ting of any name in a genus in case any species or variety 

 is transferred to it from some other genus which happened to 

 be printed first. 



In the matter of priority of genera the Vienna Congress 

 took the sensible view by saying that all genera in common 

 use should not be displaced by prior genera not in use, and to 

 accomplish this they exxepted from the rule of priority some 

 800 genera and should have put still more into that category, 

 'ihis again did away with very many Brittonian names. 



In making the arbitrary rule of once a synonym alwaj^s a 

 synonym the Brittonians made a fatal mistake, which the 

 Vienna Congress did not sanction. 



In the matter of the manner of publication the Brittonians 

 also made a serious blunder by insisting that the publica- 

 tion must be made in a certain way or it was not valid, which 

 resulted in the squabble between Britton and Greene over 

 Jacksonia. In the judgment of the writer the Vienna Congress 

 whose work was so admirable in most respects made a still 

 worse blunder than the Brittonians when it insisted on the 

 publication of all descriptions in Latin. Such a ruling should 



