1886.] BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 31 
great value of the binomial nomenclature. He established the 
classes and orders of the sexual system and bent his energies to 
describing and defining genera with greater precision. He con- 
tinued to distinguish species by the explanatory phrases of the 
older botanists. Some examples from the Flora Lapponica will 
illustrate this. Three species of Violet are named thus: 
76. Vio foliis cordato-obtusis, pedunculis caulinis. 
7. Vion foliis cordatis oblongis, pedunculis fere radicatis. 
8. Vion foliis subrotundis cordatis pedunculis radicatis. 
These species he afterward called Viola biflora, Viola canina 
and Viola palustris. 
The labor of handling these long names is apparent from the 
following extract from a letter from Dillenius to Linneus: 
Iny 
coast of Gothland, which you judge to be Polygonum erectum augustifolium, flori- 
di. i oliis gramineis, w 
bs 
nor do I object. But it is by no means Tournefort’s 
tiflora, perampla radice, whose flowers are more scattered 
: d. 
The plant, the object of all these maledictions, seems to have 
been Gypsophila fastigiata L. 
appeared what Haller emphatically termed Linnzus’ 
“maximum opus ct wternum,” the Species Plantarum. To giv 
this work its utmost perfection had been the author’s object for 
many years, and to this all his other botanical productions were 
in some measure only preparatory, as the rightly ascertaining of 
species is the great end of all method. It is in this work that 
Linnzus first employs trivial names, as he termed them, which 
are single epithets, expressive as far as possible of the essential 
Specific differences among the species of a genus, or, In default of 
these, of some striking and obvious character; not seldom they 
are local terms or the names of the first discoverers. 
Although the Linnean classes and orders for plants have 
passed away yet it is wonderful how well the Linnzan genera 
and species have stood the test of time; this is owing to the re- 
markable exactness of his descriptions as well as his keen per- 
<eption of the relationships of plants. Linnzeus was accustomed 
rom his earliest youth to put a high value on verbal accuracy 
and logical precision. He improved the distinctions of genera 
and species and introduced a better nomenclature on the binomial 
met 
3. 
a 
< 
@ 
= 
5 
i) 
5 
g 
os 
° 
a 
ry 
o 
Qu 
of 
= 
) 
o 
S 
S 
bar} 
ae 
S) 
= 
o 
ot 
: 
j 
=) 
ar] 
