BOTA]SICAL LITERATURE. ' 93 



F 



r 



have rounded some natural angularities, it did not eliminate 

 all traces of indiyiduality. Even some roots of botanical 

 prejudice here and there show active signs of life. Under 

 the inoffensive name of an author's conservatism we may 



alhide to some of these. 



At a time when the best of men, not only in Europe but 

 America, were assailing and dismembering and correcting 

 the Linna}an genera, Dr. Bigelow holds fast by almost every- 

 thing Linnrean, From his dignified place in "Harvard Uni- 



t 



on 



. all such men as Michaux (in whose elaborate new Flora 

 he of course has not been taught to recognize the masterly 

 hand of the great L. C. Eichard), and the printer-youth, 

 Xuttall, over in Philadelphia, potentially though not in actual 

 attainments the equal of Richard, and at that time already 

 author of the most influential and serviceable work which had 

 yet been issued on North American botany. His very con- 

 servative attitude toward these who, although he could not 

 so regard them, were really the new luminaries on his own 

 liorizon. he defends in his Preface ; but in language which, 

 though moderate and inoffensive, is that of an amateur rather 

 than of HTi experienced botanical scholar : 



" I have in general preferred to retain the older names of 

 genera, especially such as were in the first edition of this 

 >vork, introducing as subgenera the divisions of later botanists, 

 together with some others to which future distributors will 

 no doubt give names. It is vain to attempt keeping pace 

 with the continually shifting nomenclature of plants ; and it 

 may justly be questioned whether the benefit which results 

 from making generic distinctions more precise, is not more 

 than counter})alanced by the load of synonyms which it brings 

 with it, and the discouraging necessity which it imposes on 

 students of the science, to unlearn continually what they have 



acquired."' 



This is little else but the old outcry which the pedagogue 

 and the nurseryman have always been raising against mere 

 instability in nomenclature as being about the worst of evils 



