The nomenclature question. 
Botanical nomenclature and non-systematists, 
In the discussions on nomenclature, an important phase 
which receives scant consideration is the attitude of the non- 
systematists towards it. This is natural enough in this coun- 
try since nearly all American botanists are systematists, a 
condition which is due of course to the influence of Dr. Gray. 
Although he left few or, as some would say, no pupils, he 
nevertheless, by his pre-eminence and authority at home and 
abroad, by his attractive personality, and by his splendid 
works, set systematic botany as the ideal to the students of 
this country. No teacher or investigator of any thing like 
equal prominence has arisen among us in any other depart- 
ment of botany, the morphology of cryptogams alone ex- 
cepted, so that his influence in this particular has hardly yet 
been weakened. 
But the day of systematic botany of the old fashioned 
based-upon-anatomy sort is passing away. It is exhausting 
its own field; the law of diminishing return applies to it; and 
most important of all, the science is outgrowing it. A few 
of our younger systematists are interested equally in biology; 
young men, influenced it is true from Europe, are arising 
among us ambitious to become biologists in the same true 
sense as zoologists are; and they will change the complexion 
of botanical work for the next generation. 
Now what will be the attitude of the biologists, of the new 
Systematists, of the interested public, in nomenclature? In 
other words, upon what principle will future users of plant 
Names use them? Now for my own part from what I know 
of human nature, and from what I have seen and heard among 
those to whom what a living plant is and does is of more 
interest than what it resembles or what is said about it in 
ooks, Iam convinced that the future users of plant names 
utterly regardless of systems will use them exactly on the 
same principle as they use other names, simply as conven- 
lences. What then makes a name convenient? Undoubt- 
edly its first quality is ready intelligibility, which depends 
upon its use by the most people, and as Dr. Robinson has 
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