42 AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST 
and appears to have brought into requisition all that was said 
about this Linnaean Code in its day, whether favorable to it, 
or unfavorable; and all the codes that have been put forth between 
1867 and 1910, as far as knowledge of the history of nomenclature 
is concerned, and the whole rationale of the subject, are dilute and 
inane in comparison with Bubani’s twenty pages. The afore- 
mentioned documents are filled mainly with demagogics and 
dogmatic rulings. The latter is a densely compacted thesaurus 
of the views of clear thinking and independent minded botanists 
of the highest rank belonging to several centuries. 
As regards the matter of the Flora itself, not much can be 
said for the instruction of those who have not seen the work, 
unless we make a few quotations from it. 
Opening the First Volume, we find the first page of the Flora 
proper beginning thus: 
Classis 1.” DICOTYLEDONEAE (Theophr., Gaesalp.) Ray. 
Sect. 1.° GYMNOSPERMAE Brong. 
Ordo” -PINACE AE inde: 
Trib. 1.* ABIETINEAE Rich. (L. Cl.) Endl. 
The designations of these major groups one and all indicate 
more than a little of the author’s mind as to system. They tell 
us that Bubani, like almost all the most noted taxonomists 
that have been, judge that in a work of systematic botany 
the beginning should be made from the highest types and 
proceed to the lower; also that he has no doubt that the most 
advanced types in the world of plants are trees; and that among 
trees the conifers rank as the most highly organized. We note next 
that, whereas most writers of descriptive botany have failed to 
credit the honors of group authorship except as to varieties, 
species, and genera, this one\thinks that such as have indicated 
and named the more comprehensive groups should be held in 
equal honor. More than a hundred years before Linnaeus the 
opinion was expressed by a greater than he, that the most impor- 
tant distinction that had been made in taxonomy was that which 
we of to-day know as the dicotyledonous and monocotyledonous 
groups. Probably no great systematist of the last century would 
