120 ERYTHEA. 
Kuntze’s Revisio Generum recur so many of that author's 
new names for old plants. None will be more inconvenient 
and provoking to those who would be bound down to the 
customary in nomenclature. This is true in spite of the fact 
that Prof. MacMillan’s “beginning” of nomenclature is a date 
two years later than that of Dr. Kuntze; and this seems to 
show the year 1737 is not the usual and customary starting 
point; and in fact itis not. Neither is it the one—whatever 
people may now pretend—which had the sanction of the 
Paris Congress of 1867. That, as has been sufficiently 
demonstrated by Dr. Kuntze and myself, was by every fair 
implication the year 1735. 
One must here call attention to this, that the Paris Code, 
in its strong pronouncements for priority, makes no distine- 
tion of specific, generic or ordinal names. It employs the 
term “group” to cover all three. These laws therefore bind 
one as much to the going by priority in the selection of 
ordinal as of generic names. But the author of our book 
ignores this fact altogether and takes up names of families 
without the least reference to that principle which he admits 
to be “fundamental” in nomenclature. Then, as if realizing 
the necessity of defending this falling away, he makes astrained 
effort to have it appear as though the lines between natural 
orders were less stable or less certain than between genera. 
Undoubtedly the history of systematic botany will show that 
natural orders as groups are quite as little subject to change 
of limit as genera; I think less so, if there be any difference. 
Within the last century there have never been any doubts 
about the limits of the Cruciferse or Umbellifers, for example; 
while respecting the limits of genera within these, and other 
such stable orders, there have existed and there still exist 
very wide diversities of view among the ablest botanists. 
The List itself, must take the place of a standard work in 
botanical libraries everywhere; and there have been very 
few American books, hitherto, of which so much can be said. 
It will also hold this rank in spite of certain minor defects 
which, if small, are not the less to be regretted. One cannot 
