BENTHAM ON EUPHORBIACE^. 259 



rate article is that " On the Geology of the Plain of Marocco 

 and of the Great Atlas," by Mr. Maw. 



As to the orthography of the name of the city and country, 

 Morocco is peculiar to the English. In the adoption of 

 Marocco the authors follow, as regards the first vowel, the 

 universal continental usage. 



BENTHAM ON EUPHORBIACE^. 



This thoughtful essay ^ presents the general views attained 

 to by Mr. Bentham on working up the genera of the great 

 order Euphorh'iaceae, for the ensuing volume of the " Genera 

 Plantarum." We need not specify any of the results, except 

 to indicate the author's decision in the case of the Buxeoe. 

 He does not follow his predecessors, Baillon and J. Mueller, 

 who, much as they differ in other respects, agreed in setting 

 up the order Bnxacew^ taking their cue from Agardh, and 

 making much of the dorsal rhaphe. Bentham concludes that 

 this small group, however well defined, ought not in a general 

 view to be regarded as of higher grade than one of the pri- 

 mary divisions, or tribes, of EupTiorhiacem. We are not the 

 less pleased with this that we quite expected it. 



A wider interest will be felt in Mr. Bentham's excursus on 

 nomenclature, or rather on some questions which the study of 

 Euphorblaceoe brought up, and which some recent discussions 

 have made pertinent. The general laws of nomenclature of 

 our day, and the principles on which they rest, are laid down 

 in the code which was reported by Alphonse De Candolle 

 to the Paris International Convention, in the year 1867, 

 and, being approved, was published with a commentary in 

 the autumn of that year, and in an English translation early 

 in the following year. The laws, without the commentary, 

 were printed in this Journal for July, 1868. The ten years 



* Notes on Euphorbiaceoe. By George Bentham ; Journal Linnsean 

 Society, xvii. London, 1880. (American Journal of Science and Arts, 

 3 ser., xvii. 335.) 



