THE TORREY CLUB CATALOGUE. 189 
mind of every educated naturalist. Now,appealing to history, 
we find this not irrelevant, though not in this case quite 
decisive fact to be true; that generie names, as a class, have 
a sort of priority over specific names as a class; that is to 
say, that botanical writers distinguished genera, in their way, 
and gave names to them, before they came to the recognition 
and definition of species. "This is not in such wise true that 
one does not find species recognized, as well as genera, in the 
very oldest books of botany; but these books exhibit a very 
great number of genera, and proportionally few recognized 
species. The old books thus in some fashion represent the 
natural order by which the human mind generally proceeds | 
in these matters; for who has not observed that unlettered 
men, or children, recognize genera of plants readily but are 
more or less blind to species, unless the latter are very 
strongly marked? But what has a more direct bearing upon 
our question is, that the early botanists held many mono- 
typieal genera, and gave them names; these generic names 
often remaining the only names the species were known 
by. Still more important, and, quite decisive of the case in 
hand, as it appears to me, is the Linnwan recognition and 
preservation of all old generie names of monotypical genera. 
Linneus, in adopting universally that binomial nomenclature 
which authors for two centuries before him had gradually 
been coming to, found it needful to reject as artificial a great 
number of old monotypes, but he was careful as a man could 
be to save all the old names as species-names. Our nomen- 
elature abounds in them, and we may almost be said to con- 
cede something like a superior rank to them among specific 
names by writing them with an initial capital. At all events, 
Linnzeus, our great teacher in these things, is author of the 
usage of taking up generic names as specific. But, the two 
instances under our special consideration are cases m which 
he retained what are now regarded as invalid monotypical 
genera, and subsequent authors have been constrained to dis- 
allow them. In 1751 he founded his genus Sarothra. There 
was but one species, and Sarothra was all the name it needed. 
Issued June 30, 1888. 
