THE MAKING OF MANY SYNONYMS. 9297 
Linnean varieties are now, and have long been, accepted in 
the rank of species. 
If Linn:eus did not perceive that, under this system of short 
and easy names, synonyms would be likely to multiply like 
grasshoppers and be a burden, it may have been partly 
because of his curiously inadequate notion of the size of this 
planet, and of the number of forms of life extant thereon. He 
verily thought that no more than two or three thousand plants 
remained to be discovered and added to his seven thousand ; 
and he no doubt expected that most these species, as they 
eame along, would severally fall, each with its one new 
specifie name, into the various genera already named and 
defined by himself. 
His confidence in the immutability of the boundaries of 
genera as he had drawn them was another characteristic of 
his great but egotistic mind. He did not think that future 
botanists would, in a body, treat some of his genera as natural 
orders, and hundreds of his species as types of genera. But 
he lived long enough after the year 1753 to realize that 
such things were not beyond the range of possibility. He 
saw some of his genera broken up into several; other twos 
and threes combined in one; but he had probably a poor 
opinion of the botanists who proposed such changes. They 
may have been, in his estimation, what Rafinesque was in the 
eyes of a past generation of North American botanists. But, 
at all events, and this is what I wish chiefly to eall attention 
to, he lived to see his genera in some cases divided, and the 
species transferred. What was the usage of these contempo- 
raries of Linuzeus in respect to permanency of the trivial or 
specific name of a plant? Crantz, Miller and Scopoli are the 
very earliest exemplars of a transference of binarily named 
old species to new genera. They seemed to hold themselves, 
as bound by law, to the retention of the old trivial name. 
Had Linnwus in any way indicated that, in these alterations 
of generie names, or rather, generie limits, the old trivial 
names must be kept? Possibly so. It would manifestly 
prevent that confusion in science which Linnzus, while often 
