286 GENERIC NAMES 



monarchy. Hence Plttonla was applied to the plant 

 consecrated to Pitton de Tournefort ; but Linnaeus 

 preferred the name by which alone he was known out 

 of his own country, or in learned language, and called 

 the same genus Tournefortia. Thus we have a Fon- 

 tainesia and a Louichea, after the excellent Louiche 

 Desfontaines ; but the latter proving a doubtful genus, 

 or, if a good one, being previously named Pteranthus, 

 the former is established. We have even in England, 

 by a strange oversight, both Stuartia arid Butea after 

 the famous earl of Bute ; but the former being long 

 agtf settled by Linnaeus, the latter, since given by 

 Kcenig, is totally inadmissible on any pretence what- 

 ever, except perhaps in memory of the late marchi- 

 oness, to whom our gardens are indebted. In like manner 

 my own Humea, 'Exot. Bot. t. 1, has been called in 

 France Calomeria after the late emperor, by the help 

 of a pun, though there has long been another genus 

 Bonapartea, which last can possibly be admitted only 

 in honour of the divorced empress,, and not of her 

 former consort, who has no botanical pretensions. Our 

 own beloved sovereign could derive no glory from 

 the Georgia* of Ehrhart; but the Strelitzia of Alton 

 stands on the sure basis of botanical knowledge and 

 zeal, to which I can bear ample and very disinterested 

 testimony. 



Linnaeus, in his entertaining book Critica Botanica, 



* Tetraphis of Hedwig, and Engl. Bot. 1. 1020. 





