190 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [MARCH 
spirit and rulings of their own Rochester Code, especially when, 
as we were informed in 1895 by one of the Check List commit- 
tee, ‘the committee .~. 45.5 would still be grateful..... 
for useful suggestions on these matters, and that all communi- 
cations of this kind would receive fair hearing and sober judg- 
ment.’’** There is, furthermore, no possible reason why the 
author of the Catalogue which suggested this discussion, should 
have been, in 1900, uninformed of the publications on the sub- 
ject. In fact, perhaps unconscious of the thoroughly inconsis- 
tent course he was taking, he has followed one third of the 
suggestions made and has adopted for the conventional &ry- 
stmum of authors the name Cheziranthus; but he still clings to the 
names Stsymbrium and Roripa for genera to which they cannot 
be applied by conscientious followers of strict priority principles 
dating from 1753. 
Another point in regard to generic names pointed out in one 
of the articles cited*S is in the case of Cerastium and Stellana. 
It was there clearly shown that when the first part of the Lin- 
naean Séel/aria was transferred by the reformers to Alsine (a 
course not entirely free from question), one species was still left 
in Stellaria, namely, S. cerastioides L. This plant is treated by 
modern authors as a Cerastium, and in the Botanical Club Check 
List, the Illustrated Flora and in Mr. Heller’s new Catalogue it 
appears as C. cerastioides (L.) Britton. But in the Species Plan- 
tarum of Linnaeus Stel/aria preceded Cerastium, and therefore 
the portion of Stellaria (S. cerastioides) left when the remainder 
was transferred to Adsine should, according to the strict priority 
principle, become the type of Sved/aria, and the succeeding genus 
Cerastium should be absorbed by it. Why, then, after this mat- 
ter was clearly pointed out in June 1898, does the author of the 
Catalogue, who does not hesitate to launch a lot of new combina- 
tions based upon plants of whose status he is much less certain, 
still keep up the name Cerastium in its traditional sense ? 
The familiar vine known to most of us as Wisteria is listed in the 
4 COVILLE, F. V.: Bot. Gaz. 20: 164. 
*5 ROBINSON, B. L.: Bor, Gaz. 25 : 444, 445. 


