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PITTONIA. 



another, do warrant more than a suspicion of evil intent. 

 Bad deeds are everywhere taken as evidence of bad motives. 

 And many do not think it well to suppress upon all occasions 

 a rigliteous indignation against such deeds; admitting, as I 

 said, that one is bound to proceed with the greatest caution, 

 where he has not positive evidence. 



Dr. Schumann considers the " Laws of Xomenclature " very 

 defective in that, having laid the greatest possible stress upon 

 the principle of priority, they have named no one treatise as 

 the point from whicli to reckon. He also concedes that pro- 

 ceeding upon the principle of justice alone, the starting-point 

 for generic nomenclature could be none other than the great 

 work of Tournefort. But, since the " Laws " forbid the going 

 back of Linnneus, he thinks the congress should have named 

 some particular one of that author's works as the point of 

 departure. I, as I have said before, am of the opinion that the 

 language of the "Laws" is clear and cogent upon this point, 

 and that Dr. Kuntze, and even Mr. Daydou Jackson at the 

 outset, gave the natural interpretation. 



An admiral paragraph of this reviewer, in relation to uni- 

 formity in plant nomenclature, begins thus: "Doubtless the 

 importance of an uniform nomenclature is greatly exaggerated. 

 From a scientific point of view it makes no difference whether 



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ifoli 



or Arabic name, so long as one knows just what is spoken of." 

 This is very much to the point. It is not the botanists after 

 all, who so pedantically insist upon uniformity as the one 

 great desideratum in nomenclature. It is the amateurs and 

 the gardeners who can not abide it that a plant or tree should 

 have two^ different names. I am here reminded of some 

 passage in the writings of Baron von Mueller— who in his 

 immense labors on the Australian flora has given more new 

 names, and new combinations, than any other botanist ever 

 did excepting Linn^us and Dr. Kuntze— to the effect that his 

 new nomenclatures for extensive groups of plants are cur- 

 rently received with so much readiness that, within a year or 



