184 BOTANICAL GAZETTE | SEPTEMBER 
the so-called species of Linnaeus, and consequent impossibility 
of determining to which of the segregates a given specific name 
ought to be applied. Thus, out of the Viola palmata of that 
author, or, at least, out of plants all answering about equally 
well to his brief and vague diagnosis, no less than five 
thoroughly distinct segregate species are recognized by 
botanists who know the east American violets. Meanwhile it is 
certain that even the synonyms by Gronovius and Plukenet, 
adduced by Linnezus as all three being equivalents of his V. 
palmata, themselves represent three distinct violets; and the 
question was raised as to whether in cases like this the Linnzan 
specific name ought not to be abandoned altogether, seeing that 
he applied it to no species, but to a group of species, and that 
the name befits no one of the five or six better than the others. 
European botanists have frequently taken such a course in deal- 
ing with such groups of species which Linneus had mixed 
together under one specific name so-called. The eighteen 
species of North American asters named, and more or less 
imperfectly published by Linnaeus in 1753, were discussed as 
being in several instances indeterminable. Scarcely one out of 
the eighteen is adequately described, and the greater part of 
those which the most critical and careful specialist finds himself 
able to make out, he identifies, not from Linnzus, but from 
those pre-Linnzan authors whom Linnzus cites as having pub- 
lished fuller descriptions than his own, these often accompanied 
by plates or figures of the species. Since many hundreds of the 
Linnzan plant-species are only to be identified at second-hand, 
by help of the references which he is constantly making to 
Dodonzus, Ray, Morison, Dillenius, and other earlier authors, 
the real identification, by Linnzan name, of a host of our 
species, is accomplished by a study of those authors rather than 
by reading the short and often nearly useless diagnoses in those 
little volumes of the year 1753. The paper concluded ina note 
of warning to those of our younger botanists, who, while 
accomplishing much excellent phytographic work in the dis- 
crimination of species hitherto long confused, and publishing 
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