BUBANI’S FLORA PYRENAEA 41 
are wanting, the references to other men’s descriptions are exceed- 
ingly abundant. There is not in existence another phytographic 
work of equal compass, which, as to the bibliography of species, 
makes even a near approach to this new Flora of the Pyrenees; 
and it is a bibliography not alone of phytography. Books that 
give information about plants are rather more in favor with this 
author, than books of bare diagnosis. Citations of works of Agri- 
cultural, Horticultural, Pomological, Medical and other economic 
Botany are made most copiously; and the botanist of competent 
erudition who contemplates those multitudinous paragraphs of 
bibliography which take the place of description, will reach 
quickly the conclusion that Bubani in the preparation of his 
masterpiece read and cited more books of botany than any other 
man who ever wrote a Flora. In the case of each species that has 
been long known, his bibliography is a clear index to everything 
of note that has been written about such species within 3000 years. 
Some 21 of the pages of his Preface—large pages and 
closely printed—are given to the exposition of his views on 
nomenclature, and the reasons why he maintains them; a learned 
defense, as it were of the corrections, amendments and improve- 
ments in the denomination of families, genera and species with 
which the volumes abound. It is impossible to produce an abstract 
of the dissertation; for it is in itself an abstract, so terse and 
so compact is the whole. Where there is not a word in phrase to 
be left out without detriment to the forcefulness of statement, 
selection is hardly possible. 
The problems of nomenclature must have confronted Bubani 
early in his botanical career; and he appears to have met them, and 
to have solved them for himself; exactly after the manner of a 
strong mind, acting with firmness, and in complete disregard of the 
cavillings of his contemporaries. Bubani was 61 years of age, 
and in the fulness of mental maturity and vigor when what is 
called the Paris Code was enacted. I am not at the moment pre- 
pared to speak of the personnel of that celebrated conclave; but 
I do not think Bubani, with what must then have been his famili- 
arity with monenclature, was in attendance. I have found in the 
pages referred to no mention of any codes of nomenclature, save 
that greatest and best of them all, that of Linnaeus, which our 
conclaves of recent years have seemed to know little or nothing of. 
Bubani has very much to say about the Philosophia Botanica, 
