372 REVIEWS. 



the essential part of the citation. If, to secure this, we write 

 " Mathiola tristis, Linn. (Cheiranthus, Brown)," our name, if 

 it may be so called, now extended to five words and two signs 

 in print, or of seven words when spoken, is still ambiguous and 

 confused. It is a jumble of synonymous names and author- 

 ities, which become explicit and clear only when we translate it 

 into '•'■Mathiola tristis, Brown (Cheircmthus tristis, Linn.)," 

 that is, into name and synonym, with respective authorities. 

 This is clear and literally truthful ; the injection of the sy- 

 nonymy into the name is neither. Linnaeus reformed nomen- 

 clature by freeing the name from the descriptive phrase. The 

 school in question would deform it by rebuilding, in another 

 way (as De Candolle observes), ante-Linnaean phrases, only 

 making them historical instead of descriptive. 



The practice of appending the authority to the name when- 

 ever the species is mentioned has been so strictly and pedan- 

 tically adhered to that many take the former to be a part of 

 the name. To obviate this impression, it might be well to 

 treat the names of common plants as we do those of genera ; 

 that is, to omit the reference to authorship in cases where 

 there is no particular need of it. Not, however, so as to cause 

 any confusion with the cases referred to in the following para- 

 graph : — 



" When a botanist proposes a new name ... it is impos- 

 sible for him to cite an author ; consequently the absence of 

 such citation suffices to show that the name of the species or 

 other group is new. Linnaeus, Lamarck, De Candolle, R. 

 Brown, Martius, etc., followed this course. It is then a useless 

 complication of many modern naturalists to append ' mihi,' 

 ' nobis,' ' sp. nov.,' ' gen. nov.,' etc., to a new name. A large 

 majority of species, genera, and families were published with- 

 out these wholly personal indications." This is good as a 

 general rule; but the "gen. nov." and an indication of the 

 order or tribe are often needful. 



No new comments are made upon article 49, probably be- 

 cause the practice of botanists generally is conformed to it. 

 The article reads : " An alteration of the constituent charac- 

 ters, or of the circumscription of a group, does not warrant the 



