GENDER OF NAMES OF VARIETIES.! 
Amone other subordinate questions in Natural-history 
nomenclature, it has been asked whether names of varieties, 
like those of species, should conform in gender to the genus, 
or whether they may not as well conform to the word varietas, 
and so always be feminine. 
Linneus introduced the current practice of numbering va- 
rieties by the letters of the Greek alphabet a, 8, y, ete. But 
to some varieties, evidently to the more important, he gave 
names. These names, when adjectives, were always (so far 
as we know) made to agree in gender with the generic name, 
e.g.: Viburnum Opulus, B roseum. Asparagus officinalis, 
a maritimus, B altilis. Mesembryanthemum ringens, a ca- 
ninum, B felinum. 
In our days named varieties play a more and more impor- 
tant part; and all botanists, as a rule, appear to have followed 
the Linnean model, with now and then a divergence which is 
readily explained, and which may be said to be accidental, 
such as Ripogonum album, var. leptostachya, Benth. 
This is as one writes “form a albiflora” or “var. albi- 
flora,” awhite-flowered form or variety. But that this is not 
the pattern nor the true construction of varietal names appears 
at once on reference to ordinary cases. Thus, for example, 
in “Nasturtium amphibium, a indivisum, DC. Syst.,” it is not 
an individual variety of the species that is meant, but a name 
which stands in the same grammatical relation to Nasturtium 
that amphibium does, and to write VV. amphibium, a indivisa, 
is obviously wrong. We should say that it makes no differ- 
ence whether the word variety, or its abbreviation var. is 
expressed or understood. When the conditions of the case 
seem to call for it, we should write V. amphibiwm, var. a in- 
divisum, just as, if it were ever needful, we might write 
1 American Journal of Science and Arts, 3 ser., xxvii. 396. (1884.) 
