297 
ON THE NOMENCLATURE OF THE BRITISH nEPATICM. 
By William Cakruthers, Esq., F.L.S. 
The examination of Mr. Cooke's admirable illustrated catalogue of 
the British SepaticcB made me look into the question of the priority of 
the names given by S. F. Gray, in his ' Natural Arrangement of Bri- 
tish Plants/ (London, 1S21) to which the attention of the readers of 
the * Journal of Botany ' has already been called by Dr. Pfeiffer, in a 
letter published at page 124 of the second volume, I am induced to 
publish the results of this investigation, so that the erroneous nomen- 
clature of so many genera and species may be rectified, and the credit of 
labours so long overlooked may be restored to those to whom it really 
belongs.* 
Dr. J". E. Gray, in a paper on Chlorospermous AlgfB, published in the 
* Aunals and Magazine of Natural History/ ser. 3rd, vol. viii. p. 404, says : 
" I always look back with pleasure to the time that I spent in collecting plants 
and in studying and teaching botany, and especially to tlie period when I was 
occupied in preparing the systematic part of the * Natural Arrangement of 
British Plants/ the work that first introduced the natural system of plants to 
the student of English botany ; for I need make no secret of the fact that I 
alone am responsible for that part of the work, since, though it was published 
under my father's name, he wrote the introduction only. Having in his youth 
studied British plants according to the system of Bay, he never would adopt 
the Linnsean system ; and the only interest that he took in the systematic part of 
the work was that he considered the * Genera Plantarum ' of Jussieu as a revi- 
sion and modification, according to the increase of knowledge, of tlie Bayian 
method, while he regarded the Linnsean system as only a dictionary by means 
of which the names of plants could be most easily discovered. Tlie kind en- 
couragement and assistance which I received during its preparation from M, 
De Candolle, the father, and M. Dunal, of Geneva (then in England), from 
Mr. B. A. Salisbury, and from my dear friends, Edward Beniiett, the late 
Secretary of the Zoological Society, and J. J. Bennett, now Keeper of the Bo- 
tanical Collection in the Museum, and the use that the course of study it 
necessitated has been to me in after life, fully made up for all the obstruction 
and difficulties that were thi'own in my way by other botanists, which delayed 
the appearance of the work for nearly a year, and for the illwill exhibited 
towards me for many years after. But tiieir opposition was of no avail : the 
Natural System has been established for years ; and though the work was not 
a success — and, indeed, how could one be, that attempted to introduce at once 
into English botany almost all that had been done on the Continent up to the 
period of its publication, and thus was so far in advance of the then state of 
VOL. III. [OCTOBER 1^ 1865.] X 
