iiies for the mind to hold them readily and it is very difficult 

 for any botanist to get and keep a clear idea of them even with 

 Ihc h-cfher arrangement of spermaphytes, etc., but to split the 

 families up into about a thousand by raising- every subfamily 

 -would spoil the balance now nicely adjusted between the 

 j^Toups and cause endless confusion and in addiiion be wholly 



certain group of botanists which does this very thing with the 

 genus and which can cause nothing but confusion and is caus- 

 ing great annoyance. The reason it was not adopted long 

 Ego for the subfamilies was because the personal nomenclature 

 does not obtain in this group, but it has been the custom to 

 attach one's name to all new specific names and thus a man 

 can get immortalized by wholesale by changing the genus 

 name vt-hich requires attaching his name as a tail to all such 

 combinations. This is the sum and substance of the new fad 

 for it has no other justification. It has been the custom for 

 nearly two centuries the world over to keep allied groups in 

 genera as subgenera, which enables the student to readily grasp 

 their relationship, but now come the Brittonians and reduce 

 the genus to the subgenus and often even to a single species, 

 making new genera of them and thus throwing them into the 

 subfamily and causing endless confusion there with no com- 

 pensating advantage. Good illustrations of this are in the 

 splitting up of Aster, Aplopappus, Bigelovia, Astragalus, Ilab- 

 cnaria, Peucedanum, Cvmopterus, etc. For the same reason 

 Ihe historic variety which wdll ultimately reduce the genus to 

 the species as now understood and species to variety as now 

 understood, thus changing the whole botanical pomt of view- 

 but altering no botanical fact nor adding one jot to the sum of 

 botanical knowledge, and all because it gives a man a chance 

 to make himself a botanical nuisance of the first order and no- 

 toriously immortal by thrusting his name before the student 

 perpetually when otherwise it would never have emerged above 

 Ihe waters of oblivion. It would be far better to do away with 

 the personal nomenclature altogether and then the author ot 

 nny botanical work would be remembered only for the good he 

 has done. A stable nomenclature will do this, but the f^nttom 

 ian system will never get through its changes. The whole mat- 

 ter is the result of w^hat philosophers and scientists everywhere 

 condemn namely the misapplication and use of well estab- 



