NOTES ON OUR LOCAL PLANTS 269 
but few have the courage or some perhaps not the knowledge 
to dare follow this principle to its logical conclusion. The strongest 
objection to historical priority in plant names comes from the 
type of superficially educated botanists of our day, unacquainted 
with the Greek and Latin classics, unable without assistance in 
many cases to make up for their newly discovered genera or species 
names often that are either grammatical or correct. The diffi- 
culties standing in the way of the right system are none other 
than prejudice and ignorance, or better the prejudice of the ig- 
norant, for none but the truly shallow have prejudices. ‘These 
really do not deserve much consideration from the scientist whose 
end is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, 
and is unhampered by motives of expediency in the face of eternal 
principles of reason. 
If then is spite of the fact that due to newness of the field and 
vast erudition required to work it over satisfactorily, we are liable 
in trying to follow the principle of historical priority in the ac- 
companying notes, to make many a mistake perhaps, we ask the 
indulgence of the reader in matters so difficult. In any case we 
shall have the consciousness at the start that we begin from a 
logical point of view, and we have therefore the hope that such 
mistakes will be entirely errors of interpretation. Regarding 
priority, we may not succeed in all cases to obtain the older or 
correct name, but we feel that we are placing no obstacle de- 
liberately in our own way towards obtaining such, by application 
of a contradictory principle. Of blunders there will be not a 
few, but we shall do less injustice to the pre-Linnaean authors 
by giving the majority of them at least the credit denied them 
by our modern methods. 
There will be those that will ridicule the idea of applying 
to our plants names used by Vergil, Theophrastus, Pliny, Dios- 
corides, Brunfels, Valerius Cordus, Dodonaeus, Camerarius etc., 
In most instances the names. we use at present under our “‘ex- 
pediency’’ codes are theirs anyway, and we might as well give 
them the credit due them, by writing e. g. Adiantum Theophr. 
instead of Adiantum Linn.; Salix Vergil, for Salix Linn. That 
a comparatively small number of the few hundreds of plants 
known before Linnaeus need have their names changed because 
that author had prejudices just as code makers today have pre- 
judices, need not worry us needlessly, for more changes are made 
