6i8 NATURAL SCIENCE. oct.. 



of following the practice of zoologists in maintaining the earliest 

 specific name,'^"* and proposed to cite in parenthesis the name of its 

 original inventor, followed by that of the author who placed it in its 

 present position. Thus, to take an example, the plant first placed by 

 Pursh in its present genus Pycnanthemnm , and generally known as 

 P. linifolium, Pursh, was called by Linne Thymus virginicum. The 

 sub-committee restored Linne's name and substituted for Pursh's 

 name, P. virginicum (L.) B.S.P.'s This, they were convinced, would 

 " in the not distant future be generally accepted as the only law that 

 promises a reasonable fixity of botanical names " ; and Dr. Britton 

 further commends it as "just, rational, and stable. "^° 



The best comment upon the " stability " of this new and cumbrous 

 mode of citation is that supplied by its chief promoter. In 1891 Dr. 

 Britton threw in his lot entirely with the zoologists, and " would quote 

 [only] the original author of the specific name, leaving the author of 

 the binomial to be brought out in the synonymy of the species. "This," 

 he adds, " has the advantage of doing away with the double 

 citation "^^ — the "just, rational, and stable " method had endured for 

 less than three years ! 



Not only is the specific name in ordinary cases to be held sacred, 

 but it must remain even when it has been subsequently adopted for 

 a genus separated from the type. Thus Cochleavia covonopus, Linn., was 

 taken as the type of a new genus, Covonopus; and Gaertner, who 

 established it, called the species Coronopus niellii. This plant, 

 according to Dr. Britton," must be called Coronopus coronopus (L.) ; in 

 1888 he would have styled it " Covonopus coronopus (L.), Britton ; " 

 botanists generally would cite it (not without a feeling of irritation at the 

 needless multiplication of synonyms) as " Coronopus coronopus, Britton." 

 Here we find a very pretty difference of opinion among the leaders of the 

 new school ; for Professor E. L. Greene, who shares with Dr. 

 Britton the glory of initiating the neo-American movement, sees 

 in this duplication of names " a natural unfitness which all our 

 sense of what is proper in nomenclature shrinks from." ^3 Where- 

 upon Mr. Conway Macmillan takes a hand in the game, and thinks 

 Dr. Britton's suggestion " so excellent that it will scarcely fail of 

 universal adoption after a season of recalcitrant objection " ; ^+ and 

 Mr. T. D. A. Cockerell, in adding another list of such combinations 

 (in which, by way of contributing a little novelty on his own account, 

 he adopts a small initial for the second name), goes one better by 



18 I am aware that the Laws prescribe the retention of the specific name when a 

 plant is transferred to another genus. But I do not understand this to be retro- 

 spective. There has been considerable divergency of practice on tins point, even 

 among those accepting the Laws. 



i» Journ. Bot., i888, p. 295, '^o Loc. cit. 



*i Garden and Forest, vol. iv., p. 202. *- Bull. Torrey Bot. Club, iSgi, p. 268. 



*** Pittonia, vol. ii., p. 214. -* Bull. Torrey Club, 1892, p. 15. 



