98 The Botanical Gazette. [March, 
work were not invented until many years after its publication. 
Certainly this is a robbing Peter to pay Paul principle of 
justice. That there have been many cases of arbitrary change 
and consequent injustice in the past no one will deny, but it 
is very doubtful whether these injuries can be righted at pres- 
ent by making more arbitrary changes. Certainly the reform 
exhibited in the present list does not altogether tend to per- 
petuate the older combinations of the injured authors, but 
much more to the renaming of a considerable portion of our 
flora and the forming of a multiplicity of entirely new combi- 
nations with new authorities. But passing these considera- 
tions, which as they do not directly affect the practical side of 
nomenclature may perhaps be regarded as sentimental, we 
come to the more important question: Is the new system 
one which possesses the elements of permanency? 
It is one of the principal arguments for the stability of the 
proposed code that it is a rigid one, which permits no excep- 
tions and, to use an expression of a leader in nomenclature 
reform, ‘leaves nothing to individual judgment.” It is well- 
known, however, to every working botanist that even the se 
lection of the first specific name, after the still more difficult 
choice of the generic, involves a constant exercise of judg- 
ment of the most critical sort, both as regards the exact appli- 
cation of brief and unsatisfactory descriptions and the often 
doubtful priority of publications. Eventhe form of the name 
is sometimes subjected to individual judgment or arbitrary 
modification in the new system as well as the old, as an illus 
tration will show. It has occurred to a number of writers 
that the sweet alyssum, common in cultivation, should be 
separated as a distinct genus. The history of its synonymy 
is as follows: Upon page 420 of his Familles des Plantes, in 
1763, Adanson sets up the genus Konig, founded upon Clypeola 
maritima L. (Alyssum maritimum Lam.), with little descrip- 
tion and largely by referring by number to the species of Lin- 
nus. In 1814 Desvaux,also of the opinion that the Lamarckti- 
an Alyssum marttimum should be separated from the other alys- 
sums, carefully described it under the correctly latinized name 
Lobularia. In 1826, Robert Brown revived the name Komi 
modifying it to Koniga and dedicating the genus to a friend, 
then curator of the British Museum, whose name by a strange 
chance was Konig (anglicized from Konig). In 1891, Prof. 
Prantl, revising the CRUCIFER& for the Wat. Pflanzenfamtliemy 
