1899] BRIEFER ARTICLES 265 
can do this kind of work himself for his own catalogue. This idea 
will have to be modified. Some tradesmen can do it themselves, but 
most cannot. However, all the important ones can hire it done, and 
cheaply. It is a job that would be exceedingly dry and uncongenial 
to many excellent business men. Competent students, however, can 
be found at the universities who are making their way, and would be 
glad of such work. A thousand names can be standardized for five 
dollars, at the rate of twenty cents an hour for twenty-five hours. This 
does not include the task of rearranging names in alphabetical order, 
othe reading of proof (as some: cataloguers may prefer to do this 
themselves), but only the work of supplying the information necessary 
to the cataloguer. 
There are about seven hundred species in the Horsford catalogue, 
and only twenty-five of those names are not to be found in Jndex 
Kewensis or Nicholson. This is less than 4 per cent., which is surpris- 
ngly low when one reflects on the great number of novelties since 
1893; but Mr. Horsford sells largely of native plants, and these have 
Teceived comparatively few trade names. Moreover, a goodly propor- 
tion of these twenty-five missing names are those of hardy native ferns. 
Index Rewensis has no ferns. 
One barely begins to compare the names of a catalogue with /ndex 
‘ae when he is confronted with an important problem of which 
this is Picture : 
Alyssum saxatile Cran tz = 
Alyssum Saxatile Linnzeus. 
Now, how does the « 
“aployer has in 
'Us? Probabl 
¢ have bot 
A. gemonense. 
standardizing clerk” know whether his 
his nursery the Alyssum saxatile of Crantz or of Lin- 
y he could give a shrewd guess. Possibly he may 
: hy of the original descriptions at hand, and the plants also, bat 
: this ig ue ate iad against it. But, putting such considerations aside, 
of” a matter of identification, not of nomenclature, and the distine- 
3 thing neg a two kinds of work must be grasped at the outset, or 
' , = done. The duty of the nomenclature clerk is clear. 
3 ints in ordi at the plant in the nursery is the one that /ydex Kewensts 
: tnsidered by 7, type. The names in ordinary type, he knows, are 
 Mdlics are S : ndex Kewensis to be the tenable ones, while all those by 
al € can C en It is to Mr. Horsford’s business interest to lo 
Mperly os age Whether the AZyssum saxatile in his nursery 1S 
ot is really Alyssum gemonense. Most tradesmen, 
