3G4 REVIEWS. 



agree, or should agree, that no anterior name has right of 

 priority to a Linnaean name or to a name adopted by Lin- 

 naeus. But as respects generic names adopted by him, are we 

 to follow Linnaeus or are we not ? He says, " Tournefortius 

 primus characteres genericos ex lege artis condidit." And in 

 the " Genera Plantarum " : " Ipsi non immerito inventionis 

 gloriam circa genera concedere debeam," — and so he uni- 

 formly accredits to Tournefort the generic names adopted 

 from him : and the same as to " Plumerius, . . . Vaillantius, 

 Dillenius, . . . Michelius et pauci alii," " qui ejus vestigia 

 presserunt." De Candolle remarks that Tournefort had the 

 merit which Linnaeus ascribes, but that " he kept a good 

 many adjective names for genera (Acetosa, Bermudiana, 

 etc.)." Since Linnaeus did not adopt these, they are out of 

 the present question. Moreover, not to speak here of a score 

 or two of really adjective generic names, Linnaeus himself 

 adopted two which Tournefort had discarded, Mirabilis and 

 Impatiens, and deliberately made another, Gloriosa, in place 

 of a proper name, Methonica, of a sort which, though not of 

 the best, is now regarded as next to the best. But it is com- 

 pletely understood that Linnaeus is not to be corrected ; so 

 Gloriosa, Impatiens, etc., remain. 



Are we equally to follow Linnaeus in regard to names which 

 he adopted from Tournefort and a few later authors, some 

 of them his own contemporaries ? If so, we shall continue to 

 write Salicornia, Tourn., Corisperraum, A. Juss., Olea, Tourn., 

 Justicia. Houst., Dianthera, Gronov., Lycopus, Tourn., Lin- 

 naea, Gronov. The practice of the leading botanists has been 

 essentially uniform in this respect, from Jussieu down to De 

 Candolle. father and son, even to the latest volume of the 

 " Monographia," published during the current year. It seems 

 perfectly clear therefore — although we believe that the ques- 

 tion is not raised in this revision — that such genera are ex- 

 pected still to be cited as of their respective founders. And, 

 as hardly any one doubts that Tournefortian genera suppressed 

 by Linnaeus but restored by modern botanists (such as Fago- 

 pyrum) are to be cited "Tourn.,'' it follows that only in a 

 restricted sense do genera begin with Linnaeus in the year 

 1737. This case, indeed, is governed by the principle in 



