i ae 
136 Muhlenbergia, Volume 3 _ 
he does not believe in the principle-of advocating priority and 
then deliberately making exceptions. However, since the Ger- . 
“mans at Vienna decided against the validity of varietal names, 
and the Americans have apparently done likewise, with this 
parting protest he is going to join the ranks of the majority. 
But he is going to try to keep within the confines of the law, 
and incidentally will stretch out his hand and point out the way 
back to the straight and narrow path of rectitude to any erring 
brother who may stray therefrom. 
In the October number of the current volume of the Botan- 
zcal Gazette Miss Mary A. Day has a timely article on “Some 
Perplexities of the Indexer.” In summing up, the following 
recommendations are made: “(1) Indicating clearly each new 
species, combination, or name; (2) not allowing a name to ap- 
pear as new when it has been published previously; (3) always 
giving the correct authority, or, where the parenthesis is used, 
the correct double authority; (4) stating clearly the category to 
which each name, below the specific, belongs; and (5) in no way 
distorting or altering the rank of names attributed to other au- 
thors.” It is very important that all new names be plainly 
indicated. The printing of all new names in black type is an 
easy matter, and should become a uniform practice. It is quite 
generally understood that the absence of an author’s name after 
a name in parentheses indicates the writer of the paper as the 
author of a new combination, yet one sometimes finds instances 
of this usage when no publication of a combination is intended. 
And by all means let us have full citations, instead of the slip- 
shod manner, entirely to common, of making new combinations 
by merely giving the old name in parentheses and nothing else. 
In manuals and floras, a very simple and satisfactory way is to 
list at the end of the volume all new names published in the 
work, and the pages on which they occur. This has been done 
in Small’s: Flora of the Southeastern United States,” and in 
Mackenzie’s ‘‘Flora of Jackson County, Missouri.” 
