175 
many such instances; for example, the Canada thistle is changed from 
Cirsium arvensis to Cnicus arvense, and again to Carduus arvensis. If we 
should include the earlier editions of Gray’s Manual, and also the works 
of other authors, the number of synonyms would be greatly increased, 
some plants, in fact, having as many as a score of Latin names. If we 
add to this the not infrequent application of the same name to two or 
more distinct kinds, the confusion becomes appalling. 
All this unfortunate state of affairs in the botanical camp has been 
recognized for a long time, and various measures have been proposed 
from time to time, and more or less effectively applied, to bring about a 
reform. Of these efforts the most prominent are the DeCandolle principles 
of 1813, the Paris code of 1867, the ruling of the Genoa Congress of 1892, 
and the Rochester-Madison code of 1892-3. All the clearly defined meas- 
ures are essentially in accord in recognizing as fundamental the statement 
made by DeCandolle (1813) in his Elements of Botany (p. 228), viz.: ‘In 
order that a nomenclature become universal it must be fixed, and the 
fixity of that of natural history is founded on this principle, that the first 
one who discovers an object, or who records it in the catalogue of science, 
has the right to give it a name, and that this name must be necessarily 
accepted, unless it already belongs to another object or transgresses the 
essential rules of nomenclature.’ The application of this principle of 
recognizing the first name applied to a plant as its only legitimate and 
correct name is known as the law of priority. But to disentangle the 
confusion of a hundred and fifty years or more since Linnzeus established 
‘binomial nomenclature is a great task, and to promulgate unequivocal 
rules for the present and future naming of plants is almost equally diffi- 
eult. 
The first bomb that was fired so effectively that the botanical camp 
was stirred to its center and forced to become aggressive, may be said 
to be the publication in 1891 of Otto Kuntze’s Revisio generum plantarum. 
This work discarded names in general use by the hundreds, almost by 
thousands, and substituted unfamiliar ones, on the ground of rigid priority. 
It was like an earthquake shaking the whole structure of the nomencla- 
torial palace, and threatening no end of disaster. But those who believe 
that the sooner the inevitable change from a policy of inaction to a fear- 
less reconstruction is made have welcomed the efforts of Dr. Kuntze, and 
. have set about to see in how far he is right and to aid as much as possible 
in establishing nomenclature upon a firm basis. 
