DR. KUNTZE A^^D HIS IlEYIE^YERS. 267 



species binary names under them. Nor did this kind of 

 opposition to the general practice cease with the closing of 

 the last century. As late as 1821, and in England ( !) there 

 was a botanist who dared at that period publish a flora from 

 which not only the Linnsean classes and orders w^ere rejected, 

 but in which many pre-Linna^an generic names w^ere main- 

 tained in the place of their Litmtean substitutes; nay, more than 

 tl)is, the author degrades here and there a LinnsBan binary 

 name to reinstate an older binomial of Eay ! And this British 

 Flora, despised altogether by the English "influential bot- 

 ' anists " of the period, and consigned to an early obscurity, is 

 now become the one British Flora that is in great demand 

 wherever systematic botany is studied critically. I scarcely 

 need mention the name of its author, Samuel Frederick Gray. 

 The discussions that have" been held in continental Europe, 

 and the still more recent suggestions that come from the far 

 western part of North America, respecting the advisability of 

 doing tardy justice to Tournofort and his contemporaries by 

 restoring those generic names, of which Linnaeus w^ith the 

 connivance of his adherents deprived them, need not here be 

 intnxluced but by a bare mention; for they belong to ''the 

 last twenty-five or thirty years," a period excluded by Mr. 

 Hemsley from his imagined era of smooth sailing. 



The Linnj^an system of nomenclature is based on no ethical 

 principles at all; even justice, whose other name in science 

 is priority, is at a discount here, and the motto of the system 

 is success. Let his genus and species names stand who has 

 the tact and the influence to keep them prominently before 

 the botanical public. I am certain that this is true Lin- 

 naeanism, and am ready to concede that the strong body oE 

 men whom Mr. Hemsley speaks for, are the most genuine 

 Linnseans extant at this moment. They were never more 

 discreet than when they resolved to have no part in the delib- 

 erations of the Paris Congress; for that was known to be a 

 nioyement in favor of some settled principles — in a word, a 

 movement for priority. But, so thoroughly wedded to the 

 principle of success are the botanists at Kew, that tbey 



