122 ERYTHEA. 
did print, and that before Carya appeared. But we suggest 
that if our author is to retain “Scoria,” he should, in fairness 
to Rafinesque, find out the name of the printer and ascribe 
the name to him who made it, and not to the botanist; for he 
always abjured it. But, whatever Prof. MacMillan’s motive 
may have been for this action, it is one which did not actuate 
him in other such cases; for he does here and there correct 
errors of genus-makers and genus-printers. He makes 
Cassini say “Haplopappus” where he actually said Aplo- 
pappus; and what is more difficult of explanation, he even 
alters Rafinesque’s well constructed and clearly significant 
Lepargyre@a (meaning silvery-scurfy) into “Leptargyrea,” 
which is meaningless. 
We have for two or three years past derived much satis- 
faction from Prof. MacMillan’s zealous contending for priority 
in specific as well as generic names; and we were not expect- 
ing certain lapses of this kind which we have noted in his 
pages. For example; he makes Linnwus to say “Alisma 
Plantago” where that author always wrote Alisma Plantago 
aquatica. Scopoli (1772) is sponsor for the name A. Plan- 
tago (see Pitt. i. 293); so that Scopolis’ name for the plant is 
credited to Linnzus, and the Linnzan name of it is not given 
even in the synonymy. The Ranunculus ambigens, Wats., 
is given in this Catalogue in place of the seventy years 
earlier R. obtusiusculus, Raf., for the same species; these are 
mere examples. But again, nomina nuda are very freely put 
forward as the rightful names of species, to the displacement 
of the earliest names that came out along with diagnoses. 
Indeed, the author makes no distinction whatever between 
naked names, and names accompanied by descriptions oF 
equivalents. On the whole, the errors in nomenclature, of 
various kinds, are so numerous, that we should not dare to 
take anything for granted, as here printed, in the line of the 
bibliographical; and we might have expected much of biblio- 
logical laxity and inaccuracy in any author who could speak 
of Watson’s Index as being a book “remarkably exact.” It 
