272 AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST 
from them, one should be rightly indignant. So applying the same 
principle to family names we have less difficulty in recognizing 
the type genus of a family for the name of the latter is usually 
built up from the former as type genus. In case of such fam- 
ilies antedating 1753, as Liliaceae, Rosaceae, Orchideae, Pom- 
aceae, (or Pomiferae) Cichoraceae, Cucurbitaceae, or even Ferula- 
ceae, etc., there is very little difficulty for the merest tyro to guess 
rightly what the type genus must be. No matter how much 
the family may have been segregated from, we may be sure we are 
correct in reserving the name that contains the genera, Rosa, Lilium, 
Orchis, Malus, Cichorium, Cucurbita, Ferula, etc. are to be re- 
ferred to them even though they be left as monogenotypic families. 
When we consider on scanning any work, such as Bubani’s 
Flora Pyrenea, Sprengel’s Genera Plantarum, S. F. Gray’s Natural 
Arrangement of British Plants, which have as their basic prin- 
ciple the historical priority of plant names, how many of the 
older classical ones still remain in our nomenclature, and that 
most of them were approved by Linneaus himself, we will see 
that the changes to be made to bring botany under the system 
of historical priority are comparativery very few. They would 
be fewer in fact in the long run than those made necessary now 
by the vacillating of modified codes. There will constantly be 
found newer names older than such we have since 1753 as a start- 
ing point. Every new manual has many new ones, the new 
Gray’s Manual not excepted, though the authors pretend to 
have brought it in perfect accord to the rulings of the Vienna 
Code. Thus it seems that even this last of them all has not suc- 
ceeded in preventing changes. The next will do no more to stop 
the confusion, but will add a little more perhaps by reason of 
one or other arbitrary ruling it may make. Codes are not what 
we need to clear up our difficulties. The safest and sanest system 
will, as thinking botanists of today admit, only come when we 
apply the method of reason alone, absolute historical priority. 
Regarding citations of synonymy the original works have in 
nearly all cases been looked up. Even when the actual page 
is not quoted as happens in some cases, the citations were in most 
cases looked up in original works. It was at first thought that 
it would be better to quote only the author and the year of pub- 
lication of any given name, thus making the list much shorter, 
As, however, some of the works do not ordinarily appear in the 
