%V BOTANICAL NOMENCLATURE. 613 



I. — Generic Names. 



During the last century and the early part of the present, when 

 workers were few and isolated and means of publication and com- 

 munication restricted, it was inevitable that a considerable crop of 

 synonyms should arise. Later, certain botanists seem to have 

 assumed an arbitrary power, by virtue of which they superseded 

 names of less popular men, on grounds which could only have been 

 tolerated from their eminence of position, or from a failure to 

 recognise the rights of priority. Thus Robert Brown substituted 

 Xeyotes (1810) for Labillardiere's Lomandva (1804) without assigning 

 any reason for the change ; and superseded R. A. Salisbury's 

 Chlamyspoyum (i8og) by his own Thysanotus (18 10) for reasons which 

 would not satisfy modern requirements. Salisbury, indeed, as I have 

 shown at some length elsewhere,' was the victim of something very 

 like a conspiracy to ignore, as far as possible, his work and his 

 names ; and it is certain that many of the latter must be restored, 

 and take precedence of Smith's and Brown's. Whether this will be 

 the case with his Proteaceous genera, published under peculiar, and 

 I fear not over-creditable, circumstances, ^ may possibly be open to 

 question ; but that Hookera of Salisbury (1808) must replace Bvodiaa 

 of Smith (1820) is absolutely certain. If the well-known moss-genus 

 Hookevia be considered as approximating too closely in name to 

 Hookeni, that also must disappear ; for Salisbury published Hookera in 

 March, 1808, while the paper in which Ilooksria was established was 

 not even read until a month later. 



Smith's division of the Linnean Nymphiea (in i8o8-g) into two 

 genera, for one of which he retained the Linnean name, proposing 

 Nuphay for the other, was anticipated by Salisbury in 1805-6, who 

 called the white-flowered species Castalia, leaving Nymphaa for the 

 yellow-flowered plants. But Smith, supported by Goodenough, 

 deliberately set aside Salisbury's names "upon irrefragable [i.e., 

 classical] grounds," 3 and, with very few exceptions — e.g., Rees's Cy- 

 clopaedia — his names were accepted by all subsequent botanists 

 until Professor E. L. Greene called attention to the necessary revival 

 of the earlier titles. The tardy restitution of Salisbury's names has 

 caused some trouble and confusion, but for this Smith and his followers 

 must be held responsible. Salisbury was undoubtedly, and perhaps 

 deservedly, unpopular; but this cannot justify the wholesale boycotting 

 of his names. 



A similar course of action has been adopted with regard to 

 Rafinesque, whose eccentricities have been allowed to obscure his 

 undoubted genius. Our American friends, to whose methods of pro- 

 cedure I shall have to refer later, have devoted much energy and 

 research to the unearthing and rehabilitation of Rafinesque's names, 



1 Journal of Botany, 1886, pp. 49, 296. '^ Loc. cit., p. 297. 



* Loc. cit., 1888, p. 7. 



