96 PROPER PURLICATION 
a name be ‘“‘properly published”’ according to certain followers 
of the American Code' we have the one that a genus must have 
a ‘‘reference to a specific description which is associable by 
citation to a previously published binomial species.”’ (Rule 3. 
Canon 10, Am. Code). In order to make this statement reason- 
able and logical, it will be necessary again to make an exception 
in the favor of Linnaeus himself, just as arbitrary as any of the 
above mentioned cases. Unless we do this, then at least 
three of the Linnaean genera of the Species Plantarum of 1753 
were never ‘‘properly published,” at least by Linnaeus in 1753, 
namely Musaenda, Erythrontum, Hydrocharis. 
None of these are published in his work ezther aah or by 
direct citation to a binary name. They are there monotypic, having 
only the species Musaenda fructu frondoso, Erythronium Dens 
canis and Hydrocharis Morsus Ranae, and these are not binomials, 
nor were two of them at least binomials in the second edition of 
LyO2=3: 
Are we then to consider these names as not “properly pub- 
lished?” That the exponents of the code do consider them 
“properly published”’ is evident from the fact that they use 
these names in their floras and manuals as attributed to Linnaeus 
(1753),? though not perhaps without surreptitious, and may I 
add perhaps, dishonestly inserted hyphens, in order that the 
unwary might not suspect. Necker’s names may be rejected 
for a purpose, but Linnaean ones under similar conditions are 
to be accepted, nor are the descriptions of either author of them- 
selves more than poor, the advantage if any being in favor of 
Necker. It would seem then that the more we increase the 
number of “‘rules’’ and ‘‘canons’’ of ‘codes,’ the more we are 
obliged to have arbitrary exceptions thereto, thus ending it all 
in a flood of dogmatic lawlessness, or making confusion worse 
confounded. When rules are made let the ‘‘codists’’ at least 
honestly try to keep them. 
Bull. Dorr, Cl) XXXII 117 Giors). 
? Britton and Brown, Ill. Fl. N. Am. 1, 505, (1913). 
Pages 1-40, Vol. IV, published January 23, 1915. 
