CORRECTIONS IN NOMENCLATURE. 209 
far from correct in his assertion that Spiesia equals Oxytro- . 
pis. Necker's Spiesia is characterized as having unilocular 
legumes, and is said to include only certain species of Phaca 
published as new by Pallas. But De Candolle's Ozyfropis is 
made to rest primarily upon old Tournefortian and Linnean 
species of Astragalus having bilocular legumes; A. montanus, 
Tourn., Linn., et al. being placed as typical for the genus. 
And these plants Necker also recognizes as distinct from 
Astragalus, and from Spiesia as well, and assigns them the 
generic name ARAGALLUS; definitely indicating the 2-celled 
legumes as the essential mark of the genus, as compared 
with Spiesia. 
I do not think Dr. Kuntze can have given to Necker’s 
pages upon this topic anything more than the most casual 
and inattentive reading. Necker, it must be conceded, is not 
always easily intelligible. His conceptions of genera are 
very original, but therefore the better deserving careful con- 
sideration ; but he has his own peculiar modes of expression, 
and makes use of a terminology quite his own; so that 
special study of this author, as an author, must be made, if 
one is to identify all his genera. But in treating of Astra- 
galus and its allies he has quite freed himself from obscurity 
by citing definitely the species which compose his several 
genera. If no one has hitherto claimed to identify Ara- 
gallus, it must have been through sheer inattention to what 
the author distinctly said. On page 12 of the Elementa, 
volume III, under Astragalus, he observes that this genus 
has 34 species, and that the remaining Astragali given in the 
fourteenth edition of Linnsus' Systema Vegetabilium “ be- 
long to the next genus,” that is, to ARAcALLUs. In the 
work to which he refers, we find the Astragali divided into 
four groups according to habit, that the third group is that 
which has the habital features ascribed by Necker to ARA- 
GALLUS, and that it embraces all those Linnean species, A. 
montanus, Uralensis, campestris, verticillaris, etc., which De 
Candolle chose as the strongest representatives of Oxytropis, 
