AN EDITOEIAL ON SOME EDITOEIALS. 87 



the example of so dangerous a practice as that of founding 

 Sjjecies on plants that he had never seen alive. 



Since I am writing an argiimmtum ad ediiorem, it will 

 scarcely be in the nature of a digression for me to here cite 

 another reason why the Gazette editorial bench would seem 

 to do well in making soon a bibliological retreat; taking up, 

 for a change, a short season of recluse life, and reading a little 

 back of Linn^us. They have in this very April issue, which 

 I am commenting on, permitted one of their contributors to 

 stultify himself by announcing as a 7iew discovery, the fact that 



Ranu 



All this 



was so commonly known centuries before Linnaeus that the 

 species had, almost from the earliest records of it, the name 

 acris from this very quality. 



Again: our editorial friends in noticing Mr. John 

 Briquet's recent paper on nomenclature, unadvisedly place 

 this botanist— where he does not belong— in the ranks of 

 those who would exclude pre-Linnaean authors from' all place 

 m plant nomenclature. Yet they translate him as taking 

 Kay's Methodus (1703) for one starting point. I hope my 

 friends will not take it upon my dicium, but they will some 

 day find out, by original research, that all Ray's writings are 

 pre-Linnaean; they may then feel assured of having done 



Mr. Brio net. i 



I am loath to make reference to that review, not ungenerous 

 nor unkindly in its general tone, with which the Gnzefie friends 

 have complimented my new Manual It is true they charge 

 me with having omitted an index ; but this charge is due to 

 an oversight. The index is verily present in all the copies 

 issued. ^ They are a trifle unjust in requiring that I should 

 have given synonyms. No books of descriptive botany for 

 school children and amateurs have synonyms; see, for ex- 



Manual 



everybody's. Why, 



peat It, require me to go to all that trouble and expense, from 



^_ 1 Since they were dealing with this paper of Briquet, they might 

 kmdly have mformed him that, in his Andibertiella he has created a 



Bamona 



