266- riTTONiA. 



abilities in many cases, made up in part tlieir own deficiencies 

 by robbing of tlielr genera and species men of talent in 

 humbler station — at sucli a time our friend regards affairs 

 botanical as gliding along smoothly enough. 



The liistory of botany, in what we may call modern times, 

 runs back throu^xh full four centuries, Tlie happiest, 



sraootliest period of its history, and at the same time an active 

 and progressive one, was that intervening between the 

 appearing of Tournefort's "Siemens" (1694) and Linnious' 

 '^Systema'' (1735). The most disturbed and contentious of 

 all epochs — one not yet very near its end, we fear — was that 

 inaugurated by Linnaeus. Not one harmonious decade has 

 this period known. The transition from the Tounefortian 

 quiet to the Linntean turmoil was abrupt. Linn.^us, in the 

 guise of a reformer, doubtless meaning to advance science, 

 and meaning well at firnt, nevertheless almost outraged the 

 feelings of the best men of his time when he rejected so large 

 a proportion of those generic names which had been either 

 created or adopted by the founder of scientific genera, Tourne- 

 fort, or by that man's already revered pupils and other con- 

 temporaries. Nor was the plea of the exceeding inconvenience 

 of all these changes omitted. The cry of ''confusion," and 

 the outcry against Liniueus as the author of it, appears fully 

 to have equalled what we hear nowadays against Dr. Kutitze, 

 and the " Neo- Americans." The cry of ''confusion" ceased, 

 after a time, though the confusion itself did not. Strong 

 protests against that extensive alteration of generic nomen- 

 clature of which Linnteus was the author continued to be 

 made long after the publications of Siegesbeck, Moehriug, 

 Ludwig and Heister; and the right of Tournefortian names 

 to stand in place of their Linnsean substitutes was insisted 

 on— more or less of them being restored in their books—by 

 Adanson (176H), Crantz (ITGfj), Philip Miller (1768), Scopoli 

 (1772), Lamarck (1778), Gartner (1788) and Moet»ch (1794)- 

 AU these gave more or less emphatic disapproval of the 

 general course of matters in nomenclature, by reinstating 

 pre-Linnsean genera and generic names, and giving the 



