CONCERNING THE CITATION OF AUTHORS. 235. 
not respect; but when he comes to an Ivesia or a Horkelia 
the specific name of which is found pre-existing in Potentilla, 
there he stops; for he can not guess what names Bentham 
and Hooker would have proposed for these species. But, for 
reasons above stated, no more does he know that they would 
have written Potentilla Gordoni or P. congesta ; and every 
one of these synonyms ought to be erased from the Index, as 
specimens of false bibliography. The authors in question 
have nowhere made or proposed the names which this book, 
as it stands, attributes to them ; but.the pages of the Index 
adverted to serve to show that the author, at least sometimes, 
gives allegiance principles of priority and permanency. 
We are not at all able to understand why protest should be 
made against referring accepted and familiar binomials to 
their actual authors, even when pre-Linnzan. If so eminent 
a botanist as Baron von Mueller writes Ranunculus aquatilis, 
Dodoens,' thus citing the true author of that well known plant- 
name, what literary or scientific fault has he committed? He 
has said that, not Linnseus, but an author of some two centu- 
ries earlier proposed that rame and gave it- that currency 
which it still holds; but he has only said the simple truth; 
he has taken no departure from principles of priority, has 
made no synonym. He is even most literally faithful to 
Linneus, who did not arrogate to himself that binomial, but 
acknowledged Dodoens to be its author, citing the page of 
the Pemptades! We are not aware that aught has been done, 
or proposed, in Australia or North America, to call forth from 
our friends and fellow laborers in Britain, such a note of alarm 
as the following: “The binomial method, the reduction of 
nomenclature to a system, is one of the greatest of the reforms 
introduced by Linneus, and the attempt to deprive him of it 
is not likely to be sanctioned by botanists.”* The honor due 
as to the man who reduced nomenclature to a 
to Linnæus, 
! Census of Australian Plants, p. 1. 
2 Linn. Sp. PL. ed. 1. p. 556. 
3 Journ. Bot. xxvi. 262. 
