214 PITTONIA. 



4 



and to a proportion of their readers ; and, what is not likely 

 to have been intended, they mny iiave served to create in some 

 minds something like a prejudice against certain American 

 botanists. Bat in all efforts lately made in America, to bring 

 order out of the chaos of oar botanical nomenclature, not one 

 new line of action had been taken, up to the time when the 

 last sentence written to our prejudice- was published in 

 England and repeated in America. There were only two 

 separate propositions upon which the epithet may be sup- 

 posed to have been based; Some of us here had determined 

 to use the oldest specific names under whatsoever genus tbey 

 had been published, and to allow the law of precedence to 

 decide between two generic names where actual priority 

 could not be claimed for one over the other. The first of 

 these usages was followed by the most eminent botanists in 

 Europe from the time of Linnfrus down to our day. The 

 second is nearly or quite as ancient, and is adhered to even 

 now by many botanical authorities conspicuous in Europe, 

 Both of tliem are what may fairly be called classical usages ; 

 and Mr. Britten's reasons for attempting to make out the 

 existence of a " Neo-Arnerican School" are therefore very 

 obscure, and must be developed more clearly if the attempt is 

 to do any credit to the alarmist's knowledge. 



However, if the editor of the London Journal had but 

 waited until this year, I am not so confident he would not have 

 had an actual basis for his imputations ; for, to carry the 

 restoration of earliest specific names to the degree of writing 

 Negnndo Neguwlo and Caialpa Cakdpa as binomial plant- 

 appellations IS to enter upon a line of action new in botany, 

 as far as I can learn. A precedent for this is found in recent 

 treatises upon Systematic Zoology, but, I think, nowhere 

 else ; and there is this to be said in favor of it, that it makes 

 one less exception to the rule of employing the oldest specific 

 names But in the practice there is involved a natural unfit- 

 ness which all our sense of what is proper in nomenclature 

 shrinks from. The rudest peasant of the family of Smith 



&on 



