INTRODUCTION. 
aim to pursue each species to its original authority, there to 
assimilate its description, and then, for the guidance of other 
enthusiasts, to boil down the diagnosis into its two or three essential 
and unvarying points, omitting the general cloud of symptoms 
in favour of the salient points, and trying to express these in the 
most definite and salient manner. So that, from the brief pictures 
that follow, cultivators may, with a minimum of trouble, be able 
to ascertain quite clearly, whether they have really acquired the 
true proprietor of the name that figures on their bill. 
On the question of description much care has been spent, not 
only that it may be lucid, but also peptonised and easily to be 
assimilated. With regard to the matter of names, still more care 
and research are necessary. Let me point out, in the first place, 
to all who are inclined to throw up their hands over the vagaries 
of horticultural nomenclature, that the problem is far simpler 
than we imagine, or than catalogues allow us to believe. The 
specific name of a plant depends entirely on its oldest authori- 
tative description. Find this, and you have arrived at the ne plus 
ultra ; the original name given by the first: describer is the one 
and only name under which the plant must stand for evermore. 
For an instance, the name Campanula alpestris was imposed by 
Allioni on his lovely Campanula some years before Villars sub- 
stituted the honorific C. Allionii ; therefore the plant is, only and 
always, C. alpestris. Similarly with many other species: e.g. 
the original Primulas, hirsuta and viscosa of Allioni, Cypripedium 
Reginae (C. spectabile of gardens), and Campanula Bellardii (C. 
pusilla, Haenke). Such substitutions are apt to seem tiresome 
and gratuitous at first to the gardener, 7.e. very profitable to the 
catalogue; yet, once the fountain-head has been reached, the 
matter is settled once and for all, with no possibility of appeal 
or further change. This book has aimed at getting back to the 
genuine original specific name for every species, so that these may 
never again appear disguised as novelties in the same list that 
also contains their more common superseded name. On this 
matter research is final ; Primula viscosa, All., 1785, rests on bed- 
rock, and is for ever an unchangeable monwmentum aere perennius : 
xV 
