444 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [JUNE 
quently published plant or group of plants? Such cases are far 
too numerous to be disregarded, and a consistent or scholarly 
code, starting from the Speczes Plantarum, should certainly con- 
tain a definite statement as to the Linnzan synonyms. The sub- 
ject cannot be wholly neglected, for both radical and more 
conservative botanists have, on certain occasions, taken up 
names which had first appeared as synonyms, and used them to 
displace others of subsequent but more regular publication. Is 
such a practice justifiable in some cases and not in others ? 
While the object of the present article has been to deal 
rather with the principles than the details of the Rochester 
nomenclature, a specific instance may be cited to show that 
even where their principles may be perfectly clear, the reformers 
do not always live up to them. Of all the changes suggested 
by the Rochester reform, none has been more unfortunate than 
the transfer of Stellaria to Alsine. It involves not merely much 
specific change but leads to exceptional confusion from the cir- 
cumstance that there is another large and nearly related genus 
Alsine, which the European botanists generally recognize and 
show no tendency to abandon. However, from the standpoint — 
of the reformer, this is due to no fault of the Rochester move- 
ment, but merely to the perversity of those benighted individ- 
uals who as yet fail to accept the light it sheds. So, waiving 
for the moment all points relative to the justice and expediency 
of adopting Alsine for the greater part of Stellaria, I wish 
merely to defend certain residual rights of the latter genus. It 
is a long established fact in the common law of nomenclature 
that if a part of a genus is taken away, the rest must still bear 
the same name. Now the Stellaria of Linnzus contained two 
distinct generic elements, Stellaria and Cerastium, for the latter 
element is represented by Stellaria cerastioides L. (Cerastium 
trigynum Vill.; C. cerastioides Britton, Mem. Torr. Club §: 150, 
Britton & Brown, Ill. Fl. 2:28). The only reason why the 
reformers transfer our Stellarias to the Linnzan Alsine (a mis- 
erable generic failure, made up of Stellaria media and a Spergu- 
laria) is that Alsine appears on an earlier page of the Species 
Plantarum than Stellaria. But Stellaria has exactly the same 
