12 METASPERMAE OF THE MINNESOTA VALLEY. 



The cause of the present upheaval in plant nomenclature, 

 signalised, but not at all initiated, by such a book as 

 that of Kuntze (6), is very easy to discover. Never so 

 much as to-day has botany become world-wide. The multipli- 

 city of periodicals, the facilities for exchange and correspond- 

 ence between different countries, expeditions, congresses, com- 

 munications, the development of new centers of activity in all 

 parts of the globe, all conspire to make insularity of nomen- 

 clature impracticable, except for those who do not care to be 

 within the pale of the modern conditions. It was a matter of 

 less importance fifty years ago, if the name Potamogeton pauci- 

 florus was given to one plant in France, by Lamarck, and to 

 quite a different plant in America, by Pursh. There was less 

 danger of confusion, for French botanists and American bot- 

 anists were not then so distinctly interested in each other's 

 field. The international character of science was recognised 

 long ago in the adoption of an international language Latin 

 in which oriental and occidental investigators can commu- 

 nicate, whatever their native dialect. The law of priority 

 simply carries this recognition farther, and provides that in 

 the department of nomenclature Latin shall be used in the 

 same sense in all countries. 



In America the rightful implication of the law of priority 

 has been ably expounded by Britton (7) and Greene (8), 

 seconded by many others. Under their leadership most of 

 the younger school of botanists have determined to enlist, but 

 the older men whose life works have been largely accomplished 

 under the older and insular interpretation, the provincial dis- 

 pensation, as it may be named, have in most cases failed to 

 withdraw from the position of their youth the "position of 

 naming-plants-as-one-pleases " and their publications are in 

 consequence marred by the illegal nomenclature. Manuals 

 and handy-reference-floras, most local lists and many mono- 

 graphs have perpetuated the faulty and insular methods and it 

 is but very recently that a concerted attempt is being made to 

 establish this department of botanical work upon the only sure 

 foundation possible without a complete withdrawal from the 

 existant system. 



The present list, therefore, contains many unfamiliar names, 

 but with these are cited, so far as possible, other post-Linnean 



(6) Kuntze: Revisio Generum Plantarum (1891). 



(?) Britton: Papers in Bull. Torrey Bot. Club and Ann. of N. Y, Acad; Contr. 



Columbia College Herb.(1885 ). 



(8) Greene: Pittonia, Flora Franciscana, etc. (1885 ). 



