100 The Botanical Gazette. [March, 
The case is interesting mérely as a good instance of many 
in which zeal in searching for the earliest designation leads 
to the consideration of names so involved that several inter- 
pretations are equally possible. In passing it may also be 
noted that Prof. Britton’s Koniga maritima is long antedated 
by the same combination by Robert Brown, a writer whose 
works the reforming botanists can scarcely afford to over- 
look. 
It will be generally admitted that a system of nomenclat- 
ure is unsatisfactory in which the botanist who characterizes 
and names a new species with all due care that he is not dup- 
licating an existing name, nevertheless can not be at all sure 
but that the name so carefully chosen may at once be dis- 
placed through no fault of his. Yet such is the case under 
the Rochester and Madison rules. When Nuttall made the 
combination Chrysopsts pilosa, it was a new binomial applied 
to a good new species evidently belonging to the genus 
under which it was placed, and never before described in this 
or any other genus. Can any author hope in describing 4 
species in the future to do better than this? Under the long 
established usage of conservative botanists such a name would 
be inviolable; under the Madison rules, however, Prof. Brit- 
ton is able to displace it by combining the same specific name 
to the same generic but to designate an entirely different 
plant, namely Chrysopsis pilosa Britton (Erigeron pilosa 
Walt.), making thereby a most useless and pernicious Sy! 
onym of Nuttall’s name, which has every right to stand. 
It is not the special case that is here important, but the 
general principle, which permits such changes and will con- 
tinue to permit them in the future. The upheaval of nomen- 
clature under this law will not cease even when most of the 
obscure names of the past have been sought out. It will al- 
ways be possible for a botanist through perfectly conscien- 
tious work to readjust generic lines so that species of the 
same specific name are thrown together. In such cases under 
the prevalent usage that species which was already under the 
genus retained stands fast. But according to the Madison rule, 
as we have just seen, if the species brought into the genus 
chances to have an olderspecific name than the species already 
in the genus, both plants are to be re-named instead of only 
one. It does not seem to have occurred to the reformers 
that this ruling, far from being conducive to stability, would, 
