Against the Using of Revertible Generic 



Names. 



There is a rather numerous list of names which, having 

 been applied successively to several different proposed genera, 

 have been, under the law of priority as operating in connec- 

 tion with passing opinions upon the validity of the genera, 

 always slii)ping about from genus to genus in a fashion most 

 prejudicial to stability in nomenclature. I think that the 

 time is come when botanists should take united action against 

 this insecurity of tenure which invests a considerable number 

 of generic names, including not a few cherished ones. That 

 they are lapsable, and therefore destined to make endless 

 fature trouble unless placed under interdict, has come to 

 pass through lack of caution on the part of authors in naming 

 genera. If they had foreseen— and it would not have taken 

 supernatural foresight— that a name once coined and applied 

 to a genus ought to be left to stand or fall with that genus, 

 there would have been no revertible generic names. 



For an example of the usage against which I am about to 

 enter emphatic protest, let me refer to page 87 of the tenth 

 volume of De Candolle's Prodromus where, under the biblio- 

 graphy of Mortensia, one may gain some notion of the kind 

 of disaster into which plant naming has often been run, 

 through making repeated and diverse applications of the same 

 generic name. It will be seen that in the year 1797 Both pub- 

 lished the genus. The reigning autocrats in botany, according 

 to the usual custom of their caste, ignored it, remanding the 

 type to the old genus in which they had been wont to place 

 it. Seven vears later WiUdenow took up the name and 

 applied it to a supposed new genus of ferns. Three years 

 after that Thunberg, disallowing either the Mertensia ot 

 Roth or that of Willdenow, proposed a third genus under 



