_ f90r] BRIEFER ARTICLES 363 
adoption is the only practicable way of securing stability to the origi- 
nal names.’’ This idea has permeated the writings of the reformers, 
and they have over and over again asserted in books and papers for 
amateurs and “the younger generation” that the names they advo- 
cate are alone the ones which can stand. 
That the principle of strict priority (the fundamental law of the 
Rochester Code) has been many times ignored by those who claim to 
follow it was sufficiently emphasized in the March Gazette. Indeed, 
when Professor Greene pointed out,’ in 1896, that the principle of 
priority demanded that the first species of a complex genus be taken 
as the type, he was merely showing the logical outcome of the prin- 
ciple. When again, in 1899, Professor Underwood followed the 
Same interpretation in his Review of the Genera of Ferns, he was 
merely following conscientiously the fundamental principle of the 
Rochester Code, and the law so often vigorously defended by Professor 
Britton, who “accepted Tissa rather than Buda for the simple reason 
that it stands first on the page in Adanson’s ‘Familles,’” saying, 
“That is priority, I am sure.” 
After such clear definition of the principle of priority by Professors 
Britton, Greene, and Underwood, we are now amazed to see from 
Professor Britton’s pen a convincing argument against the uniform 
selection of the first species as the type of a complex genus. Where 
Shall we look for that long-promised “uniformity” when, in writing 
of the principle as logically followed by Professor Underwood and 
more than once by Professor Greene and by Mr. Thomas Howell, 
Professor Britton now says, “‘Inasmuch as a great many genera have 
at their first publication been made to include more than one species, 
and in a large number of instances some of these, often the first in 
Position, have been used by subsequent authors as the types of addi- 
tional genera, this latter-day proposition affects an enormously greater 
number of cases than those which fall properly under the operation of 
the rule’ ?" And when, continuing his argument against the neces- 
Sary acceptance of the first species as the generic type, he says “dt is, 
therefore, clear that there is nothing logical in the proposed extension of 
the principle” [italics ours],* does he not directly contradict the con- 
clusions of Professor Greene and Professor Underwood? Further- 
more, how are such views reconciled with the fundamental principle 
* Pittonia 3: 128. 1896. Science 13 : 588. 1901. 
° Mem. Torr, Bot. Club 6: 247. 1899. Science 13 : 588. 1901. 
