278 PITTONIA. 
such genera as Hookera and Castalia, which the Editor of 
this Journal has so clearly shown to be of obligation under 
the law of priority, will meet with approval and adoption- 
The remnant of that party here resists these reinstatements 
with whatever it has retained of its former influence and 
authority. 
Against the practice of restoring old specific names in those 
genera when new ones had been made to replace them, it must 
be admitted that Dr. Gray sometimes argued, “ with his wonted 
care and ability,” in divers journalistic paragraphs; and our 
friends in England, not having looked into his books to see 
how very often, through successive pages of plant-naming 
and describing, he adopts the very practice which he disap- 
proves in others, imagine that here they have made a point 
against us. We would, therefore, invite attention to Dr. 
Gray's nomenclature of any of the genera of the Synoptical 
Flora, in which there are Linnzan species now placed in other 
genera. Take the Erícacec for an example. There is Rhodo- 
dendron, at present made to include the species of the Lin- 
nean Azalea. There are named and described five species 
of the Azalea subdivision. Every one of them had received 
its first specific name under Azalea. To four out of the five, 
new specific names had been given upon their introduction 
into Rhododendron ; but, in each of these four instances, 
our author has rejected the “first name which the species 
received under its proper genus,” adopting that more recent 
combination which embraces the old specific name under 
Azalea. One of my colleagues in America has lately adverted, 
incidentally, to the case of Moneses, in which Dr. Gray, as 
long ago as 1847, set aside his English namesake's M. grandi- 
flora (S. F. Gray, Nat Arr. ii. 403), and rehabilitated the 
little plant in its old Linnean (yea, pre-Linnzean) specific 
name, making the new combination Moneses uniflora A. Gray. 
And these which I cite are but fair samples of Dr. Gray’s 
occasional practice when the species are old, and have received 
' Bull. Torr. Club, 1888, p. 230. 
