320 The Botanical Gazette. [July. 
us. It refuses to use new lines of research offered by embry- 
ology and comparative morphology, and except in the accu- 
mulation of more material and some refinement in details it 
is hardly less but rather more of a book and skeleton study 
than it was fifty years ago, or even to Linnaeus himself. The 
earnest worker in other fields, and indeed present popular 
opinion can hardly be blamed for considering a good deal of 
it, and especially wrangling over nomenclature, as of a very 
amateurish sort, employing the faculties of the postage stamp 
collector rather than those of the naturalist. 
osum up: Ido not believe in and do not teach the no- 
menclature of the Madison Congress, because I do not believe 
it can possibly prevail. It violates the psychological princi- 
works on North American botany of greater authority than 
those already in existence; it is impossible to secure the co- 
operation of the foreign botanists; it overturns much that 
was sufficiently stable, to replace it by a new system which 
has not the element of stability, since it will not be able to 
induce future botanists to use it.—W. F. GANONG. 
Dr. Robinson and homonyms. 
In the preceding number of the GAZETTE Dr. B. L. Robin- 
son has presented another of his fatal objections to the prin- 
ciples of nomenclature adopted by the Botanical Club of the 
American Association—namely, the principle of the rejection 
of homonyms as applied to binominals. In support of this 
objection he cites not a case known to science, but a wholly 
suppositious one, the occurrence of which is a matter of 
almost ridiculous improbability. It should be answer enough 
that this is a purely hypothetical objection, especially if we 
are to be guided by Dr. Robinson’s previous utterance! that 
principles of nomenclature should not be laid on theoretical 
grounds. There probably will never occur a more glaring 
case of unscientific ‘‘lumping” of genera than that indulged 
in by Dr. Otto Kuntze when he united Bigelovia, Solidago, 
and Aplopappus with Aster, and yet even this lamentable 
piece of patchwork has not produced the chaotic results por- 
ig ee li uaa ee ee 
4 Recommendations regarding the nomenclature of systematic botany, P- i. 
(May, 1895). 
