Cook: NOMENCLATURE OF THE ROYAL PALMS 355 
The few readers, if any, who may have had the curiosity to 
follow along this barren path of unnecessary error may be the 
better able at least, to understand why systematic study has come 
to be looked upon, more and more, as an unproductive part of 
the biological field. The history of the nomenclatorial vicissitudes 
of the royal palm is no unique instance, and is not brought for- 
ward as an indication of any special carelessness or perversity on 
the part of Professor Urban or Dr. Dammer. It is a fair and 
typical example of the taxonomic methods, or lack of meth- 
ods, which still render much of the systematic work of even the 
larger botanical centers a waste of the time, not merely of the 
specialists now writing, but also of their successors who must 
some time unravel the skeins so industriously tangled. The 
method of types, requiring the fixed and definite application of 
names, is as essential for taxonomy as the multiplication table for 
mathematics, dates for history, or latitude and longitude for geog- 
raphy. It is so axiomatic, indeed, that it escaped formulation by 
DeCandolle and other eminent taxonomists, and is evidently stil] 
unconsidered by European botanists. The recent announcement 
of a botanical congress, to be held in Vienna in 1905, provides 
that all proposals of nomenclatorial reform must be based on 
DeCandolle’s Paris Code of 1867. The method of types is more 
fundamental however, than anything in the Paris Code, and once 
admitted to the serious consideration of taxonomic workers is 
soon found to justify a thorough recasting of nomenclatorial leg- 
islation. This task is already well advanced in America, though 
not yet entered upon by our trans-Atlantic colleagues. 
The present vast confusion of names and methods has tended, 
no doubt, to discourage the entrance into systematic biology of 
those who appreciate that life is short, and that names and classi- 
fications are not the final objects of scientific study. Nevertheless, 
the fact that nine tenths of the difficulties of formal nomenclature 
can be permanently removed by consistent adherence to a few 
simple rules will have its effect in time, and biological taxonomy 
May ultimately Serve its original purpose of rendering nature and 
science more accessible, instead of artificially multiplying labor and 
confusion. 
