AN INNOVATION IN NOMENCLATURE. 83 
: The same treatment is, naturally enough, applied to species. Take _ 
. single example from those presented on almost every page of the vo- 
lume. Linnaeus reduced all the forms of Castor-oil plant he knew to 
Ricinus communis, L. Dr. Miller does the same ; but he knows many 
more forms, and has arranged them with exhaustive particularity under 
four primary divisions, sixteen varieties, and some of these into almost 
as many subvarieties. So this equivalent conclusion, resulting from a 
survey of more materials, is represented not by R. communis, L., but 
by M. communis, Mull. Arg. Now who shall decide upon the quantity 
of materials to be revised, or number of synonyms to be reduced, which 
may entitle a writer to take this great liberty ? The only case which 
might seem to warrant it, is when two or more species of the same 
author and the same date are comprehended in one under a general 
character. Instances of the sort are probably to be met with in the 
work under consideration. But Mercurialis annua, from which the 
name of Linnaeus has dropped, is not a case in point, — M. ambhjua 
(regarded as a mere state of the former) having been published by the 
younger Linnaeus. 
Finally, there is a foot-note on p. 192, which should not pass unno- 
ticed. For the statement, " Nomina nonrite edita sunt nomina inania 
omnique prioritate carentia," as interpreted by the use made of it upon 
the occasion of the note, opens the way by which a just and well-esta- 
blished rule is made to operate in violation of the prevalent comity of 
botanists. Our own remarks upon this very point, in Sillknan's Journal 
tor March, 1S64, p. 279, have been once or twice reprinted in Europe, 
without dissent ; and we "see no good reason as yet for recalling: them. 
nile the rule in regard to priority has its proper scope in maintaining 
that " manuscript names in collections, however public, should assert 
no claim as against properly published names," still " the distribution 
of named specimens [and, a fortiori, of these in sets, widely distri- 
buted among herbaria, as were Sieber's], where and as far as they go, 
is held to be tantamount to publication/' So of names and original 
1 • * 
servations attached to specimens in herbaria. These names are 
always attached antecedently to publication ; and a monographer, 
rfving, as he should, free access to all herbaria within his reach, mijjht 
*0!t a deal of harm if he did not regard such names as to hurt all the 
Mneai if already published. The lull recognition of an obligation to 
us " as sensibly quickened the advance of botany, by securing the 
or 
O 
