378 REVIEWS. 



sensibly affect the place of a name in an index, such obvious 

 corrections as of Wisteria to Wistaria may prevail. We may 

 assume that the error was typographical ; for Dr. Wistar 

 was at the time too well known in Philadelphia for Nuttall 

 to have been ignorant of the orthography of the name. The 

 correction of Balduina into Baldwinia brings it into accord- 

 ance with the rule that personal names used for genera 

 shoidd be written as near as may be with the original ortho- 

 graphy of the person's name. ''^ Astragahis aboriginorum^^ 

 is neither a typographical nor a clerical error. It is a hard 

 rule that forbids us to write " aborigiuura," still retaining 

 Richardson's name as authority. 



Botanists may take more kindly to the rule when applied 

 to such names as Eleocharis and Aplopappus, in the forma- 

 tion of which the Greek aspirate was neglected. We cannot 

 well suppose this to have been a typographical or clerical over- 

 sight on the part of Robert Brown or of Cassini. Perhaps a 

 majority of botanical authors have preserved the original or- 

 thography, on the ground that the right of priority, like that 

 of a certain king, is super grammaticum, — while the re- 

 mainder have written Heleocharis and Haplopappus ; whence 

 some confusion in the indexes. The requirement to preserve 

 the original form of the generic and specific names and to abide 

 by the Latin of Linnaeus and Iws contemporaries, notwithstand- 

 ing classical faults, enables us to retain such familiar names 

 as Ranunculus acrls, Lathyrus palustris and sylvestris (in- 

 stead of R. acer, L. j)aluster and silvcstris'), and to keep up 

 " laevis " for smooth, — probably to the disgust of classical 

 scholars. 



M. De Candolle has a note on Dielytra of Borckhausen, 

 changed into Dielytra to make it conformable to a conjectured 

 meaning, and then into Dicentra that it might agree with 

 the etymology given by Borckhausen himself : he gives it as a 

 case in which an excess of erudition has loaded the genus with 

 three names in place of one ; and he concludes, as do we, 

 that it were better to have kept tlie original orthography, and 

 have treated it as a name which had, through some mistake, 

 failed of meaning. But the name having been changed into 



