6 PITTONIA. 
especially such original, independent and masterly botanical 
writers as Haller and Gmelin, to depart from that course of 
procedure in which Miller had taken the lead, and where 
almost every one else was following, 4. e, the restoring the 
ancient specifie name fullonum to the plant which had so 
long borne it before Linnzeus misapplied it? 
Many a novice in the study of nomenclature may, I fancy, 
be ready with the answer that, sativus being the first adjective 
name assigned to this form by Linnzeus, it must be taken up 
for the species, if the variety be accepted in the rank of & 
species. But this kind of answer can only come out of the 
recently developed, exaggerated and distorted view of the 
importance of Linnzus as a botanical nomenclator. Certain 
it is that the botanists of the times of Haller, Miller, and 
Gmelin had no such notion of the perpetual sacredness of 
Linnean specific or varietal names. If it did not enter into 
the minds of all those great botanists who so promptly and 
continuously repudiated the Linnsean misapplication of the 
name fullonum that Linnean naming was sacred and in- 
violable, so neither did the other class take up the varietal 
name sativus for any such reason as that Linneeus had given 
it inviolable sanction. Such notions are very modern: They 
did not actuate the nomenclators of a hundred and forty 
years ago. The actual reason for attempting to perpetuate 
for the Fullers’ Teasel the name D. sativus will be found in 
the fact that it had been known by that designation very 
generally for at least two centuries anterior to the time of 
Linneus. The following excerpts from the bibliography of 
the species in botanical works of the sixteenth, seventeenth, 
and eighteenth centuries will demonstrate this: 
Dipsacus sativus, Dodoens, Pempt. 723 (1583). 
—— Gerarde, Herbal, 1005 (1597). 
——- C. Bauh. Pinax, 385 (1623). 
—— Johnson, Herbal, 1167 (1633). 
——- Park. Theatr. 983 (1640). 
HI 
