XXVI INTRODUCTION. 



an intermediate or transition period ; during which the name is 

 still used in the earlier sense or application by some botanists, 

 while it is applied in the later sense by other botanists. And thus, 

 in a collection gradually accumulating during a series of years, 

 and drawn together from many sources, the very same plant will 

 appear labelled under different names, or different plants will 

 have the same name applied to them. Such cases as these 

 cannot rightly 'be called blunders in nomenclature either by 

 sender or by receiver, although they might readily be supposed 

 so on a cursory glance at the labels, without taking special note 

 of their dates, with the explanations which the dates ought 

 to suggest ; usually would suggest to the experienced botanist, 

 who had watched the gradual name-changes through a long 

 life-time. 



An example may render this more clear. In the time ol 

 Hudson and Smith, and even several years later, the name of 

 Oenantlie pimpinelloides was in general use to designate the plant 

 now better known to most of us by the name of Oenantlie 

 Lachenalii; the former name being now as generally given to 

 another plant abundantly different. Of course, specimens 

 labelled " pimpinelloides " in (say) 1820 1840 would very 

 usually be the same with specimens labelled " Lachenalii " in 

 (say) 1850 1870 ; while, during the intermediate years 1840 

 1850 and even later, some botanists would assign the one name, 

 some botanists would assign the other name, to specimens of 

 the plant in question. The difference here, although a sort of 

 misnomer, would not properly imply error on the part of either 

 set of labellers ; it might arise simply from one of them adher- 

 ing to the nomenclature of (say) Smith, and the other of them 

 adopting the altered nomenclature of (say) Babington. 



Another mode in which the right reading of a name turns on 

 the date of its use, arises out of the modern tendency to divide 

 and subdivide the species accepted as such by our predecessors. 

 When aggregate species ABC comes to be divided into three 

 segregate species A and B and C, the old name which desig- 



