166 The Botanical Gazette. [April, 
and would have been ably explained, by many of the botanists 
present. Now that they have been adopted by overwhelming 
majorities in democratic botanical assemblages, we may well 
ask whether Dr. Robinson’s protest is not out of place, and 
whether he has any available substitute to offer or improve- 
ment to suggest. He surely cannot expect American botanists 
to revert to a now discredited system of nomenclature under 
which they had been chafing more and more for the past fif- 
teen years. 
Dr. Robinson’s remarkable statement of opinion that sta- 
bility is not the most important quality of nomenclature, fills 
me with amazement. After a reconsideration of this view, 
having in mind the relation which must exist between stabil- 
ity and ready intelligibility, he surely will not attempt to 
maintain such a position. ; 
Dr. Robinson’s statement (p. 103) that uniformity, consist- 
ency, and stability of nomenclature are in his opinion unat- 
tainable, confirms my impression that he has only the faintest 
conception of the strength of the new principles or the com- 
munity of opinion of which this simple list is the expression. 
One by one our botanists have become convinced that the 
new system 7s adequate to the requirements, and I cannot 
believe that Dr. Robinson, when he fully grasps the intent 
and the working of this code, can fail to be convinced of its 
utility. It would require too much space to recount the 
history of the new system, receiving successive impulses as it 
did from Henry and Arthur Adams in 1858, in conchology; 
from our own illustrious Baird in the same year, in orml- 
thology; from the now venerable Dr. Gill in 1861, in ichthy- 
ology; and in the past twenty years perfected by other emi- 
nent biologists with whose names and work we are familiar. 
The Rochester meeting of botanists was held in 1892, the 
Madison meeting in 1893, and now in the spring of 1895 we 
are able to cite the following as some of the organizations 
which have already issued publications incorporating essen- 
tially the same principles of nomenclature as those under 
which the committee carried on its work. 
United States National Museum. 
United States Department of Agriculture, Division of Bot- 
any and Division of Forestry. 
Arnold Arboretum. 
Missouri Botanical Garden. 
