DR. KUNTZE AND HIS REVIEWERS. 273 



seems to be the legal startiDg-point under tlie Paris Code, 

 Both uanies are equally ancient, and ancient in their present 

 application also. Few perhaps care to know that Astragalus 

 has precedence over Tragacaniha with Tournefort 



Dr. Kuntze has assumed too many of tlie prerogatives of a 

 bold reformer, no doubt; but in all his volumes one may not 

 find an example of a certain kind of pure and transparently 

 vacuous assumptions such as of which Mr. Jackson's half- 

 dozen pages are prolific. Here is one: " Genera which have 

 been set aside because of their obscurity, can not be revivified 

 by any later study." In the abstract this is simply saying 

 that a piece of identification which one man has undertaken 

 and failed to make, can not be made by any one: or equally, 

 that what an earlier generation has failed to make out, no 

 subsequent one need undertake. But, according to Mr. 

 Jackson, even if it were otherwise, and one futile effort in 

 such a direction did not preclude a later, '^no sensible person 

 would wantonly inflict a wrong on the botanical commonwealth 

 by ascertaining the genera of old authors; as it can only be 

 of antiquarian interest," Here, in the first clause, it is made 

 a wrong even to acquire a certain kind of knowledge, if its 

 acquisition be possible. Is then the present state of botany 

 so precarious that some kinds of knowledge must be absolutely 

 avoided, lest wrong be inflicted on the science? TJiis sounds 

 like an echo of that proscription of research Avhich men have 

 said belonged to "dark ages." Nor is the second clause of 

 the quotation more fortunate: knowledge of old authors in 

 botany "can only be of antiquarian interest." I had always 

 supposed that the antiquities of astronomy, for example, were 

 of astronomical interest, and that the antiquities of another 

 Very old science, botany, were really of botanical interest. I 

 can but wonder, after what Mr. Jackson here sets forth, if con- 

 forming to his proscriptive views, the great botanical libraries 

 of London have lately made over to the antiquaries their 

 hundreds of fine folios of the "old authors" in botany. If 

 they heed this particular one of their botanical writers, 

 that is what they must do; for it were waste of valuable space to 



