62 AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST 
the name comes from the fact that the fruit is in panicles, Pliny 
states that a kind of poorer grade of bread (panis) was made from 
the plant, and it is the general opinion that Pliny’s plant was 
P. wtalicum. 
What seems all the more strange that Beauvais should have 
mistaken the type in his attempt at segregation, is that even in 
the editions of the Species Plantarum of Linnaeus the members 
of the group to which P. ztalicum belongs are described by Linnaeus 
before those to which the name is now given, so that this is ad- 
ditional reason to suppose that even Linnaeus if he could be 
supposed to give preference to types, hereby showed a perference. 
by right of position at least. I can only guess that the reason, 
if any exists, why Beauvais should have considered the Setaria 
group as real Panica, to have been what their panicles were more 
typical in the modern sense of the word, but the explanation of 
the origin of the derivation just given explains this. Even the name 
Setaria could not stand as it is a homonym, Acherson having given 
it to a group of lichens in 1798. Scribner recognizing this, called 
the genus Chaetochloa, but it had already been given a name, 
Ixophorus by Schlectendal in 1861-62. Kuntze* in his Revisio 
Plantarum Generum suggested a name Chamaeraphis of Robert 
Brown, but this simply amounts to joining the Sefaria of Beauvais 
to the other genus, and there are those who hold that they are quite 
separate and distinct groups of plants. The new Gray’s Manual 
of Fernald and Robinson still holds to the name Setaria, as also 
does Mr. Parrish} both appealing to the international laws of 
nomenclature, in spite of the fact that the name is a homonym. 
In view of the appeal of Mr. A. A. Eaton to Art. 45, in the case of 
Epipactis to which the case of Panicum and Chaetochloa seems to 
me to be a parallel, it would appear that the Vienna Code. needs 
* Kuntze, O. Rev.Pl. IL, p. 766. 
+ Parrish, S. B. Muhlenbergia. Vol. V. p. 114. 
p. 34. Panicum Chabraeus, D. Stirp. Sciagraph. (1677) p. 178. Panicum 
Ruellius De Nat. Stirp. (1543) p. 322. Panicum aliud Indicum Vobelius, 
M. Observ. (1576) p. 25. Panicum Matthioli, P. A. Com. sex. Lib. Diosce. 
(1559) 255, 256. also do, (1554) p 230. also do. (1552) p. 229. Panicum 
Ttalicum sive paniculo majore, Tournefort. J. P. Inst. Rei. Herb. (1700.) 
a. Fig. 298. also Els. Bot. (1694.) p. 417. & Fig. 298. ete. ete. Panicum 
Dodonaeus, R. Frum, Leg. (1564.) p. 69. also do. Com. de Stirp. (1559) p. 11. 
also do. Hist. des Plantes (1557) 317, 318. 
we 
