2SG PITTONIA. 



Of course, our German bretliren are seeking — nay, actually 

 struggling— to evade the force of Dr. Otto Kuntze's great 

 work, the importance of which we are sure we have not exag- 

 gerated in our commeodation of it. The work is justly charac- 

 terized as revolutionary, and it may prove to have marked an 

 epoch in botanical nomenclature ; and the incredible subter- 

 fuges that the most iufluential botanists are taking in efforts 

 to elude the consequences of Dr. Kuntze's arguments are 

 perhaps the strongest attestation of the merits of his book. 



That in our own time there are many working botanists 

 ready for the defense of priority from the stand-point of the 

 ethical is certain. Dr. Kuntze's strong appeals to the prin- 

 ciple of justice will have met with a hearty response in many 

 places : and the almost utter abandonment of the ground of 

 right and wrong, in relation to nomenclature, by those who 

 have subscribed to the Berlin Protest will repel many, and 

 must sooner or later react against all which this fourth propo- 

 sition has in view. There is probably no stability for nomen- 

 clature upon this newly proposed basis, even if every botauist 

 now living should subscribe to the four Articles ; for the very 

 next generation of botanists might from some source imbibe 

 a love of justice, and undo all that we had done. The thought 

 of a temporary disturbance, bringing some confusion, might 

 not deter them, and should not deter us. But a very strong 

 answer to this fourth Article, through one which makes appeal 

 to the principle of priority without specific allusion to the ethi- 

 cal basis on which alone that principle ever obtained in the first 

 place, is given editorially in a recent number of an American 

 journal. It should by all means be read by every botanist, 

 and to give it further currency I here repeat it: 



"If all naturalists could be induced to agree to call Malve- 

 opsis Malvastrum or Spiesia Oxytropis, because these names 

 are more familiar to the present generation and their reten- 

 tion would save labor and confusion, and if not only the 

 present generation of naturalists, but their successors for all 

 time could be bound to adopt these names, then the plan 

 would be an admirable one. But unfortunately the only way 



