BUBANI’S FLORA PYRENAEA 49 
never have applied the term cerata but to a thing made of wax, 
as for example a wax plaster. 
According to Bubani’s way of thinking, botanical Latin ought 
to be Latin, anyhow, and the beautiful science not be made, through 
its nomenclature, a common dumping ground for all sorts of 
rubbish of impossible and intolerable Latinity. There have been, 
there are, and there will always be men of his opinion, though 
these are not likely soon to become multitudinous; and to the 
multitude of to-day, at least in this country, Latin names of plants 
are mostly terms of a set of meaningless cabalistics, and their use 
in books of vernacular botany a mere pedantry. It is even taught 
in some of the so-called codes, that the best policy is that of ceasing 
to think of names as having meaning at all. 
But the name Taxus baccifera may not satisfy every one 
who may see the desirability of substituting something in place 
of the erroneous term baccata; for almost a century before Bubani, 
Salisbury had dispossessed the species of that mistaken adjective, 
and had named the tree Taxus lugubris, of which action Bubani 
was well aware, for he mentions the name in his synonymy. 
Perhaps his mind may have been that the name given by Linnaeus 
should but be corrected, and, as corrected, be retained in preference 
to one of later date that is of wholly different meaning. 
The citation of Julius Caesar on Taxus has impelled me to 
consult the passage (Comm. Book VI., Ch. 31), where it is recorded 
that at the beginning of winter Catavolcus, the aged king of a 
Belgian tribe, burdened with years, and feeling himself unequal 
to the hardships of a winter campaign, “taxo se exanimavit,”’ 
that is, poisoned himself to death with yew. Whether modern 
toxicologists know anything experimentally of this poison or 
not, I know not. The deadly principle does not reside in the 
fruits; for these have been eaten without harm in recent times, 
as they also were anciently. 
Let us present a few more illustrations of our author’s ways 
of expressing himself as to genera that have been long recognized; 
and Quercus may well come next, as a genus that has been written 
about ever since the beginnings of history. Without any paren- 
thesis, he credits the genus to “ Virgil, Plin., L.”’ by which I suppose 
he means to show that Quercus has been the name the genus has 
borne with all botanists using Latin, the earliest as well as the 
