88 The Botanical Gazette. (February, 
clature, and we might as well go back to the very beginning 
of plant names if we want to be absolutely just and ‘render 
unto Cesar the things that are Czsar’s.” n this point no 
less an authority than Bentham declared that ‘‘the specific 
adjective of itself is not the name of a plant,” and that ‘ora 
species the combination of the substantive and adjective is ab- 
solutely necessary.” It follows from this that a plant is not 
correctly named, until it receives its proper generic and spe- 
cific name in combination. 
But perhaps the strongest objection to the insistence on 
the use of the specific name under any and all circumstances 
is the absurdity to which it leads in the use of homonyms. 
In a reply which I wrote to Mr. Stearns’ paper on Nomen- 
clature in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, but 
which was withheld from publication, I pointed out that the 
legitimate outcome from the proposed reform, if carried out, 
must lead to the adoption of what DeCandolle, Bentham, Dr. 
Hooker, Dr. Gray and such eminent botanists had always fe 
garded as too absurd for consideration, as it was not thought 
probable that any botanist would adopt anything of the kind. 
Yet it has come about exactly as I said and we are treated t0 
such absurd combinations as Phegopteris Phegopteris, Scaie 
polypodium! What a wonderful revelation of scientific know! | 
rules proposed by the German botanists at Berlin offer am" ; 
permanent agreement than our own af 
Roe 
would be glad to see them, or similar ones prevail. —GEO 
ORT. 
E. DavENpP 
Some remarks On nomenclature. ase 
€ how the nomenclature question can other#! 
an by a Paris congress in the year 1900 wit 
I cannot se 
be settled th 
