INTRODUCTION. 15 



generic authors back to Tournefort, others are inclined to go 

 back to Dioscorides or Pliny (19) with their references. There 

 is ample room for argument in this department of the subject, 

 but apparently no room for dogmatism. It will be generally 

 acknowledged that any starting point is, of necessity, arbitrary, 

 and it becomes a matter of preference, to be determined as far 

 as possible in the light of convenience and custom whether one 

 base-line or another be adopted. 



The common notion of lay-botanists that Linnaeus was the 

 founder of genera or the inventor of the binomial system of 

 nomenclature, is of course, readily corrected by the facts of 

 history. Nevertheless, Linnaeus is generally admitted to have 

 been the first to reduce nomenclature, specific and generic, to 

 an orderly condition. His work is therefore, for convenience, 

 adopted as a meridian and in these pages specific citations do 

 not go back of the 1st ed. of the Species Plantarum (20), nor 

 generic citations (except in the case of some synonyms) back 

 of the 1st ed. of the Genera Plantarum (21). I am unable to 

 see any gain in citing from the Systema of 1735. 



Citation of genera and families. It seems clear for apparent 

 reasons that priority should govern in generic names, for in the 

 present condition of botanical science the conception of a genus 

 is relatively stable. This is true whether one adopts a wide or 

 narrow notion of a given genus. Family and ordinal names, 

 are, however, not yet likely to be stable, for they are based 

 upon a more fluctuating foundation. It is probable that the 

 time is not yet ripe for a definite and sharp determination of 

 family or ordinal characters. While, then, priority may rightly 

 govern in generic citation, there is no reason to insist upon it 

 in family, ordinal or class citations. But if this should be 

 gainsaid, the position may at least be maintained that the mer- 

 idian here adopted should be the Genera of Endlicher (22). It 

 would appear that any purely intellectual concept like a family 

 of plants, which certainly has no objective existence, but is 

 merely a category in which we are accustomed to group cer- 

 tain quite distinct individual organisms on the basis of sup- 

 posed relationship, abstracted from observed and hypothesised 

 resemblances, should be elastic in name as it is elastic in sig- 

 nificance. The evident objection is that this is true also of 

 genera and species, which are, in like fashion, subjective cate- 



(19). S. F. Gray: Arr. Brit. PL (1821). 



(20). Linnaeus: Species Plantarum, ed. I. (1753). 



(21). Linnaeus: Genera Plantarum, ed . I. (1737). 



(22). Endlicher; Genera Plantarum (1836-40). 



