GENDER OF NAMES OF VARIETIES. 1 



Among other subordinate questions in Natural-history 

 nomenclature, it has been asked whether names of varieties, 

 like those of species, should conform in gender to the genus, 

 or whether they may not as well conform to the word varietas, 

 and so always be feminine. 



Linnaeus introduced the current practice of numbering va- 

 rieties by the letters of the Greek alphabet a, /?, y, etc. But 

 to some varieties, evidently to the more important, he gave 

 names. These names, when adjectives, were always (so far 

 as we know) made to agree in gender with the generic name, 

 e. g. : Viburnun Opulus, /3 roseum. Asparagus officinalis, 

 a maritimus, /? altilis. Mesembryanthemum ringers, a ca- 

 nium, (Sfelinum. 



In our days named varieties play a more and more impor- 

 tant part ; and all botanists, as a rule, appear to have followed 

 the Linnean model, with now and then a divergence which is 

 readily explained, and which may be said to be accidental, 

 such as Ripogonum album, var. leptostachya, Benth. 



This is as one writes " form a albiflora " or " var. albi- 

 flora," a white-flowered form or variety. But that this is»not 

 the pattern nor the true construction of varietal names appears 

 at once on reference to ordinary cases. Thus, for example, 

 in " Nasturiwn amphibium, a indivisum, DC. Syst.," it is not 

 an individual variety of the species that is meant, but a name 

 which stands in the same grammatical relation to Nasturtium 

 that amphibium does, and to write iV". amphibium, a indivisa, 

 is obviously wrong. We should say that it makes no differ- 

 ence whether the word variety, or its abbreviation var. is 

 expressed or understood. When the conditions of the case 

 seem to call for it, we should write N. amphibium, var. a in- 

 divisum, just as, if it were ever needful, we might write 



1 American Journal of Science and Arts, 3 ser., xxvii. 396. (1884.) 



