1898] THE ROCHESTER NOMENCLATURE 443 
reform have replied that such a course, while logical, would 
"require foo great change. It would appear then that the Roches- 
ter code is a clever device to bring us stability by causing a - 
great deal of change, but not foo much change. In his recent 
comments upon the Berlin rules,t Professor Britton propounds 
_ the momentous question: Who is to say whether Elvasia elva- 
sioides involves tautology ? It does not occur to him to ask : 
Who, in the American reform, is to make the refined distinction 
between much change and more change? Yet the two questions 
in their relative importance forcibly suggest a Berlin mote and 
a Rochester beam. 
Besides this matter of the selection of the generic type, 
_ Various other questions, relative to their nomenclature, seem as 
e yet unsettled by the reformers. What, it may be asked, is the 
Status of a generic synonym in the first edition of the Species 
Plantarum? Can it be neglected as a ‘“ pre-Linnzan”’ name ? 
_ Certainly not, for it appears in print subsequently to the begin- 
‘fing of 1753, the date from which priority is reckoned. These 
_ generic synonyms, it may be argued, are not properly described, 
_ but for that matter the accepted genera of the same work are 
| not described at all. Both, however, are clearly defined by the 
Species. Now under Psoralea Dalea L., the name Dalea is used 
_ hot solely as a specific name, but, a line or so below, as a generic 
_ Synonym. In other words, even in “ Linnean” times, the first 
_ generic name applied to a Dalea was Dalea. Why then do our 
_ teformers feel it necessary to change fifty or more species of 
- Dalea to the subsequently published genus Parosela of Cava- 
ples? Nor is this by any means the only instance in which 
e generic synonyms in the Species Plantarum are likely to cause 
'ttouble. The name Pedicularis, for example, as it first appears 
2 on page 602, does not represent the genus to which it is = 
_ *pplied, but is a clear synonym of Bartsia coccinea, or as it 1s 
‘Pew called Castilleia coccinea. But, having once been applied to 
4 Castilleia, how, without violence to the principle of “once a 
Synonym always a synonym,” can it be later used for a subse- 
*Bull. Torr. Bot. Club 24: 419. 
