356 PHYTOGRAPHY. 



725. Names of Snbgenera or of other sections of genera are 

 like those of genera ; indeed very many of them, and the most 

 fitting, are old generic names which have been comprehended 

 in the genus by reduction. Unlike genera and higher groups, 

 however, sections, when of Greek derivation, may properly take 

 the termination in -oides, 1 and the typical section may bear the 

 name of the genus with the prefix Eu. 2 Sections need not be 

 named at all, and only those of comparatively high rank should 



is a farther extract from the same protest against the practice "of creating 

 a new name in order to combine an old specific with a new generic one : " 

 " In Ferns, the wanton multiplication of ill-defined or undefinable genera, 

 according to the varied fancies of special botanists, has had the effect of 

 placing the same species successively hi several, sometimes seven or eight, 

 different genera ; and it is proposed to maintain for the specific appellation 

 the right of priority, not only in the genus alone in which it is placed, but 

 in the whole of the genera to which, rightly or wrongly, it has been referred. 

 This has been carried to such an extent as to give to the specific name a 

 general substantive aspect, as if the generic ones were mere adjuncts, 

 a serious encroachment on the beautiful simplicity of the Linnaean nomen- 

 clature ; and it is to be feared that there is a tendency in that direction in 

 phaenogamic botany. When a botanist dismembers an old genus, the rule 

 requires that he should strictly preserve the old specific names in his new 

 genera ; and, when he has wantonly and knowingly neglected this rule, it 

 may be right to correct him. But where a botanist has established what 

 he believes to be a new species, and has therefore given it a new name, the 

 changing of this name after it has got into general circulation, because it 

 has been discovered that some other botanist had previously published it 

 in a wrong genus, is only adding a synonym without any advantage what- 

 ever, and is not even restoring an old name ; for the specific adjective is 

 not of itself the name of a plant. ... A generic name is sufficiently in- 

 dicated by one snbstantive ; for no two genera in the vegetable kingdom 

 are allowed to have the same name ; but for a species the combination of 

 substantive and adjective is absolutely necessary, the two-worded specific 

 name is one and indivisible ; and combining the substantive of one with the 

 adjective of another is not preserving either of them, but creates an abso- 

 lutely new name, which ought not to stand unless the previous ones were 

 vicious in themselves, or preoccupied, or referred to a wrong genus. It is 

 probably from not perceiving the difference between making and changing 

 a name that the practice objected to has been adopted by some of the first 

 among recent botanists." Bentham, 1. c. 



1 A genus could not properly have one of its sections called by its own 

 name with the addition of -oides or -opsis, as Asteroides or Asteropsis, for it 

 is senseless to declare that an Aster resembles an Aster ; but sectional names 

 of this composition may be excellent for sections of other genera, as ex- 

 pressing analogy or resemblance. Latin generic names used for sectional 

 ones properly take the addition of -ella, or -ina, or -astrum. 



2 The prefix Eu (Greek for much, very, or true), prefixed to a generic 

 name of Greek origin, is the proper designation of the typical section of 

 that genus, meaning the group which should bear the generic name if such 

 genus were divided. The rule against hybrid names should in strictness 

 exclude this prefix from Latin names, but it has not always done so. 



