258 AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST 
in rich, well drained soil in the Turtle Mountains. Sp. Pl. 863 (1753). 
7. Erigeron racemosus Nutt. 
Occasional along water courses. Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. 7: 
272 (7845) * 
Leeds, North Dakota. 
A QUESTION OF NOMENCLATURE. 
By J. A. NIEUWLAND. 
After having called attention to the fact of the priority of 
Schmidel’s name Thelypteris* over Adanson’s Dryopteris or 
Schwartz’s Aspidium, on the basis of 1753 as the “starting point” 
of nomenclature, several objections by well known botanists 
were made to me supposedly founded on certain codes or opinions. 
Followers presumably of the Vienna Code claimed that 
Schmidel’s generic name like Adanson’s was not made accom- 
panied by the simultaneous publication of a binary specific name, 
or without any direct reference to such in another work and designating 
in the latter case the referred binary as type of the new genus 
As far as I can find on consulting botanists it would seem that the 
followers of the so-called American Code will accept the validity 
of the genus on the latter of the two alternatives, or even when it 
is perfectly clear that a given plant is meant whether reference to 
any binary is made or not. 
For the followers of the American Code, a system typified 
by Britton’s Manuals and other works emanating from the New 
York Botanical Garden, there can be no possible objection to 
Thelypieris; for Schmidel made an indubitable and unmistakable 
reference in synonymy to the first edition of Linnaeus’ Species 
Plantarum, as also the same in the tenth edition of the Systema 
Naturae, actually quoting the Linnaean “specific name.’’T 
The makers of the Vienna Code, however, have arbitrarily 
decided that. since even the Linnaean generic diagnoses were 
* Am. Midland Naturalist, Vol. I., p. 224, etc. 
+ ‘“‘Acrostichum fronde pinnata, pinnis pinnatifidis integerrimis Linn. 
Spec? p, 107. N. 21, Syst. Nat; Ed. X. p. 1g20)a- 27: 
