2 ERYTHEA. 
America especially, the field is very vast, the forms multi- 
farious and intricate, and the characters of groups often 
obscure and uncertain; and the present writer, though enjoy- 
ing the advantage of a far more extensive field knowledge of 
these plants than has been in the possession of any of his 
predecessors, approaches the task of reviewing the genera 
with much diffidence and with some fears; but at the same 
time with none of that convenient conservatism —if weak and 
nerveless timidity be not its fitter designation—which agrees 
to things established because they are established, even when 
convinced that the establishment rests on a phytological 
absurdity, or an authorial piracy. 
The series of papers here inaugurated will be given mainly 
to the delimitation of American genera and species, and to 
the correction of their nomenclature; taking up the tribes, 
for convenience sake, in about the order given in Bentham 
and Hooker’s Genera Plantarum. 
For the nomenclature of genera, we are not disposed to 
recognize any particular initial date. Even the year 1700, 
which is the one involving less of injustice and untruth- 
fulness than any other, can not be fixed upon without trans- 
gressing repeatedly the fundamental law of priority; for 
many good botanists before Tournefort had established new 
genera by clear diagnoses, or good figures of their types, or 
by unmistakable known equivalents. While, however, we 
are strongly disposed to take up, in general, the oldest 
names, paying no particular deference to the years 1753, or 
1737, or 1735, or even 1700, we can not but regard some 
points in the Linnzan reform as well taken: for example, 
that of the rejection of such comparative names as those 
ending in oides; a good proposition which even such a 
classicist as Adanson could not but approve and give 
second to. At this point, however, it may be well to remark, 
that Dr. Kuntze’s proposal to alter such names so as to end 
in odes, seems a wise one, and, with the consent of a world’s 
congress, one might like to follow that precedent. 
