NOTES ON OUR LOCAL PLANTS 271 
word referred to in Homer, Hesiod, Theophrastus, Theocrites, or 
Dioscorides might suppose that our American plant of that name 
grew in the Orient! As a rule, however, even Linnaeus left the 
Grecian synonyms of accepted Latin names severely alone, though 
he sometimes took a well sounding doubtfully interpreted name, 
and applied it to a new-world plant. Even in that case there 
was for example no reason whatever to take the old Greek name 
Dodocatheon and give it to a plant that already had a perfectly 
valid name, Meadia. 
It is reasonable therefore to accept all the ancient plant 
names given before the era of printing on the same relative basis 
of priority as was held by the pre-Linnaean botanists generally. 
By accepting historical priority as our guide in nomenclature 
credit is given to whom it is due. No arbitrary or unreasonable 
principles need be applied, but only the principles of reason. 
This is not really a code; for a code implies some agreement, 
and seems to imply the arbitrary. Never until our own times 
has there been so much confusion of nomenclature, and never 
too have we been so much and frequently afflicted with new 
fashions of codes. There never really was any need whatever 
of any of them, and most botanists have begun to see that we 
would have made more progress had some refrained from stirring 
up a hornet’s nest every time a new code is to be “proposed or 
emended?”’ 
We hope that as a record of the plants in our locality these 
pages will appeal even to those who are prejudiced against his- 
torical priority, or are entirely indifferent to nomenclatorial 
problems. The names accepted as valid on the basis of 1753 
as a ‘starting point’’ of biological science, will be given in capital 
letters so that the synonymy may be noted at a glance. 
In regard to names of families or orders, we shall try as much 
as possible to accept priority as we have for genera and species. 
The old argument may be brought up here that families and orders 
have changed so much that many older family names, even pre- 
Linnaean ones, can not be considered in the same sense as now 
outlined. The family Rosaceae Boerhaave, may not include the 
same genera as now. If we reject it for this reason we may 
reject for a similar reason applied to genera, nearly all of Lin- 
naeus’ names. If any one now failed to attribute the name Rosa 
or Lilium to Linnaeus because segregates have since been made 
