188 PITTONIA. 
Carya. Why not also the generie at the same time? The 
moment surely was opportune, though late, for paying one 
more of the still unpaid debts which American botanists owe 
to the genius of Rafinesque. Zoologists long since, beginning, 
I believe, with the just and magnanimous Agassiz, have given 
this man his genera in their department of science. In 
botany, Hicorius, Fl. Ludov. 109 (1817), conclusively ante- 
dates Carya, Nutt. Gen. ii. 220 (1818), and, being the cor- 
rectly Latinized aboriginal name of these American trees, is 
altogether unobjeetionable. 
Among the new adjustments of specific names, of which 
there are some seventy instances in the catalogue, there are 
two at least in which the principles of priority appear to us 
to have been misapprehended. To bring out clearly our 
meaning, let us ask, which of these two names is most 
thoroughly in keeping with the doctrine of priority, Hyperi- 
cum Sarothra, Michx. or Hypericum gentianoides, Britton, 
Sterns and Poggenburg? Rhodendron Rhodora, Gmelin, 
or Rhododendron Canadense, BSP.? For both these plants, 
each of which was taken by Linnsus as the type and sole 
representative of a genus, our authors, while following the 
opinion of post-Linn:eans that they are not valid genera, have 
combined each of the Linnean specific names with what is 
now deemed the right generic name, although earlier botanists, 
who disallowed the genera took, in each case, the old generic 
one and used it as specific. Is the specific name, in the genus 
of one species, to be continued in use, rather than the generie, 
when generic rank ceases to be accorded? The specifie one, 
be it remembered, was always useless, only . formally, not 
necessarily appended, and was always subsequent to the other 
in place, usually so in time. 
Repeating our question: where does priority really lie? 
With Hypericum gentianoides, BSP., or with H. Sarothra, 
Michx.? The doctrine of priority in nomenclature is the 
doctrine of a historical settlement of all questions about 
names. This alone, quite apart from the fact that it 
promises ultimate fixity, should commend it strongly to the 
