186 BOTANICAL GAZETTE | MARCH 
characters enough to justify the use of a distinctive name,” and 
who, like him, knows the plant only from the descriptive phrase 
“fruit bright yellow.” These two cases are sufficient to show 
the character of work which can be done by one who believes 
in making all the new combinations. possible, when he is handi- 
capped by “lack of time’’ to consider his work, and who 
apparently holds it more important to launch a mass of ill-con- 
sidered (and often to him unknown) species than to publish 
only the results of critical and scholarly consideration. 
If in thus launching so many species (and occasional varie- 
ties) of which he can have little or no personal knowledge, the 
author were producing combinations consistent with the names 
in the remainder of his book, his reason would be obvious and 
to some extent justifiable. But only a slight examination of the 
names taken up is sufficient to show that he has had little con- 
ception of any clearly defined principle to govern his selection 
of names. Professedly the names in his work, like those in the 
Botanical Club Check List and in Britton and Brown’s //lustrated 
Flora, are based upon the principle of strict priority; but the 
result, as shown here perhaps even more than in those works, 
gives us little assurance that the publications on such a basis are 
bringing us the uniformity which has been so loudly proclaimed 
and which every one would so gladly welcome. 
In the first group of plants listed, for instance, the Pterido- 
phyta, the names essentially as defined by Professor Underwood® 
are taken up. Professor Underwood is one of the few authors 
among the radical botanists who has squarely faced the strict 
priority question, and in his selection of generic types he has 
attempted to follow the logic of his course to the bitter end. 
Thus, as the type of the genus he takes the first species described 
under the generic name, so long as the same plant does not 
belong to some previously defined genus. In such a case he 
logically takes for the generic type the first species which is 
clear from all previous genera. However much one may differ 
from him as to the expediency of such a course, it is indeed a 
° Our Native Ferns and their Allies. Ed. 6. 1900. 

