DR. KUNTZE AND HIS EEYIEWERS. 281 



ethics, solid learning and refined tastes, some sucli reform in 

 plant nomenclature as tliat ^^liicb M. Saint-Lager in these 

 times vainly advocates, will be carried into effect. If before 



ifurfJiafi 



>/^ 



genera, they will be the first to be rejected. Certainly in 

 the whole history of genera no other two such monstrously 

 ugly appellations for plants have been invented; and many 

 others constructed by him are little better. Waisoiunnra and 

 its cognates are less objectionable, and would even have been 

 quite tolerable if we could have been left to our own guessing 

 as to their whole etymology. None would ever have been 

 able to fathom that mystery, and in this there would have been 

 something interesting. "We therefore regret the author's 

 having explained to us the fantastical origin of that amra. 

 The information makes the names more positively obnoxious 

 than they would have been. But Waisonamra has few if any 

 chances of perpetuity, the genus of palms, Serenoa^ appar- 

 ently precluding it: for never yet has it been admitted that 

 two generic names may stand in honor of the same man. For 

 the same reason CouUerina of Dr. Kuntze is a mere synonym, 

 as Dr. Britton has already indicated.^ For the Greeneana of 

 Dr. Kuntze there is a better prospect; because the GreeneUa 

 of Dr. Gray is composed simply of some white-rayed species 

 of the Willdenovian genus Xanihocephalnm. 



I scarcely meant, however, to write one sentence in de- 

 preciation of this work; for, in spite of its faults, the Eevisio 

 Generum of Dr. Kuntze both is, and is likely long to remain, 

 the most important treatise extant upon the history and the 

 whole literature of plant names; and the author has placed 

 under profound obligations to himself every conscientious and 

 careful botanist throughout the world. 



^ And similarly an inchoate Coulterophyinm in Pringle's Mexican 

 plants of 1891, should be withheld from puhlication. It ia in no wise 

 admissable. 



