212 PITTONIA. 



of Haller, and also of Jussieu, was that of supposing tliat 

 such an usage might be allowed. The honor of having pro-' 

 posed the most satisfactory name for this order, the name 

 Cyperacepe, belongs to the elder De Candolle ; but my dear 

 friend at the antipodes would bestow that honor where it does 

 not fall, namely, upon his and my own great favorite among 

 all eighteenth century botanists, Albert Haller. He is, there- 

 fore, unjust to De Candolle.' I grant that the greater honor 

 belongs to Haller, as having indicated the family alliance of 

 these plants ; and the way out of the difficulty, it seems to me, 

 becomes clear if we recognize another general principle, one 

 which Baron von Hueller for the time appears to have lost 

 sight of, namely, that he who will enjoy the full honor to be 

 gained by the circumscribing of any natural alliance of plants, 

 must assign it a name that is valid. Cyperi is absolutely 

 untenable for any natural order, for the reason that there is 

 a genus whose species, if spoken of collectively, are Cyperi; 

 and the generic has priority over the ordinal employment of 

 the name. This argument applies, of course, to many of the 

 ordinal appellations employed, too inconsiderately I am 

 obliged to think, by Jussieu. The course taken by me in the 

 Flora Franciscana has seemed to my mind entirely logical, 

 and I entered upon it without the least doubt or hesitancy. 

 If a man give a new genus an untenable name, even my friend 

 in Australia will agree that, with the disappearing of the 

 generic name disappears also the author's name; and the 

 rule is as simple, the way just as plain, Avhere the name is 

 that of a family. 



Throughout the book are traces of the author's individu- 

 ality and originality of view. Extensive inroads are made 

 upon what one of my Korth American colleagues has face- 

 tiously designated as the "time-honored Candollean sequence 

 of Natural Orders. That entirely empirical and heterogeneous 

 Division of Endogens, the Apetalje, is suppressed ; and it must 

 be by every modern botanist who regards science as more 

 sacred'than his own and perhaps same other people's personal 

 convenience. An entirely original feature in Baron von 



