268 PITTONIA. 



promise to yield even to tli9 principle of priority if its advo- 

 cates "succeed in popularizing tlieir ideas of 'right' and 

 * justice' in the matter." I am glad that at Kew they write 

 so cautiously, and that Mr. Herasley put those two words in 

 quotation marks; otherwise, worthy men might have seemed 

 to express an umvillingness to have anything to do m the 

 work of establishing right and justice in their sphere, though 

 willing to enjoy the peaceable fruits thereof, when perchance 



at some future day, these shall be ready to be gathered. 



Mr. Jackson criticizes Dr, Kuntze, not as do others at Kew, 

 for his vindication of the principle of priority, but as having 

 taken ''the date of issue of LinncBiis' first edition of the 

 Systema Naturae, 1735, as his arbitrary starting-point." E^^^t 

 no longer ago than 1887, Mr. Jackson himself announced that 

 in his own revising of genera for the Index of Plant Names, 

 he had taken the same work and date as his point from which to 

 reckon priorities. '' Our starting point, then," he tells us, "i^ 

 the publication of Linnaeus' of the Systema Naturae, 1735. 

 There is a notable difference between Mr. Jackson's statement 

 of his own case here, and his statement of that of Dr. Kuntze. 

 He makes the Systema starting-point to have been taken 

 by Dr. Kuntze "arbitrarily," while against his own taking np 

 of the same point of departure he made no such accusation; 

 and we can but wonder, and Avish that we knew what Mi'- 

 Jackson's doctrine is. Could he name a starting-point whic^i 

 he would not consider arbitrarily chosen? He seems to hold 

 the opinion still that there must be a starting-point, and even 

 that 1753 is the proper date. But is this an ^^ arbitrary'' 

 point of departure, or does he judge it to have been decided 

 upon by some autliority ? Would he have blamed Dr. Kuntze, 

 for instance, as taking his starting-point arbitrarily, in case 

 he had made 1753 his date? What was the chain of circum- 

 stances—the category of experiences, by which Mr. Jack- 



^ Journal of Botany, xxv. 68. 



