June 10, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



811 



In addition to the above, Dr. W. F. Hillebrand 

 read an important paper on the ' Distribution 

 and Quantitative Occurrence of Vanadium in 

 the Rocks of the United States,' but to attempt 

 to abstract it here would not give satisfactory 

 results. 



Wm. F. Moesell. 



toreey botanical club. 



The scientific program on March 30th in- 

 cluded three papers, of which the first, by Dr. 

 V. Havard, Surgeon U. S. A., was upon 'The 

 English Names of Plants.' He said that, the 

 necessity for English names being recognized, 

 botanists should decide on the principles which 

 are to determine their selection and formation, 

 so as to secure greater uniformity, simplicity 

 and usefulness. To each plant an authorized 

 vernacular binomial should be assigned, so that 

 ambiguity and confusion may be avoided. In 

 the absence of suitable English names, already 

 recognized, it seems best to adopt the Latin 

 genus name, if short and easy, like Cicuta, 

 Parnassia, Kalmia, Hibiscus, or a close transla- 

 tion thereof, when possible, like Astragal, 

 Chenopody, Cardamin, while the specific Eng- 

 lish name should be an equivalent of the Latin 

 one or a descriptive adjective. 



As to construction, the rules recommended 

 are as follows : In case of all English binomials 

 clearly applying to well-known individual 

 species and no others, all substantives are 

 capitalized without hyphen, as in Witch Hazel, 

 May Apple, Dutchman's Pipe. In all genera 

 in which two or more species must be desig- 

 nated, the genus name is compounded into one 

 word without hyphen, as Peppergrass, Sweet- 

 brier, Goldenrod, Hedgenettle, etc., except in 

 long names, where the eye requires the hyphen, 

 as Prairie-clover, Forget-me-not. Genus names 

 in the possessive case (St. John's- wort) are 

 written with the hyphen followed by a lower- 

 case initial. Plants commemorating individual 

 men (Douglas Spruce, Coulter Pine) are written 

 without the marks of the possessive. In specific 

 names participial endings are suppressed, the 

 participle becoming a substantive which is 

 added as a suffix, without hyphen, thus Heart- 

 leaved Willow is changed to Heartleaf Willow. 



Discussion followed. Dr. Britton, Mr. Clute, 



Mr. Rydberg, the Secretary and others partici- 

 pating. Commendation was given to the at- 

 tempt to simplify, to make use of the vernac- 

 ular, and to secure greater euphony. President 

 Brown and Dr. T. F. Allen deprecated the 

 manufacture of book-names. Dr. Allen also 

 pointed out the confusion which has resulted 

 from the improper transfer of English and Ger- 

 man names to plants which are kindred but 

 not identical. Professor Burgess defended the 

 use of vernacular names, saying that they de- 

 serve more attention, and that in their absence 

 the generic name should be used unchanged. 

 " Many Latin names, as Portidaca, win their 

 waj' without change as soon as once fairly made 

 familiar. Coined names seldom live ; a name 

 to be successful must be a growth, as language 

 is. Allowance must be made for new discov- 

 eries, even in supposed monotypic genera. 

 Names like Witch-hazel are fitly treated as 

 themselves generic, not binomial. To drop the 

 possessive often loses from our thought an as- 

 sociation with the discoverer which is worth 

 preserving. To drop the participle ending -ed 

 is often, however, a distinct gain, both in se- 

 curing compactness and expressiveness." 



The second paper, by Dr. N. L. Britton, ' The 

 Genus Parthenium in Eastern North America,' 

 was a description of a new species of Parthe- 

 nium, from ne&v Charlotte, Va., intermediate 

 in leaf-margin between the pinnatifld leaves of 

 tropical species and the subentire leaves of the 

 type P. integrifoUum. Plants of the latter from 

 White Sulphur Springs, Va., are now cultivated 

 at the New York Botanic Garden. 



The third paper, ' The Influence of the Nu- 

 cleus upon the Formation of Cell Walls, ' was by 

 Professor C. O. Townsend. " It was observed 

 by Klebs (Pfeflfer, Untersuch. a. d. Botan Insti- 

 tute z. Tiibingen, Bd. II., p. 500) in .1888 that 

 when cell contents are separated into two or 

 more parts by plasmolysis, only the part con- 

 taining the nucleus is capable of forming a new 

 cell wall. In the following year Palla (Flora, 

 p. 314) performed a series of experiments in 

 which cell walls seemed to be formed around 

 the nucleus-free protoplasmic masses. The ex- 

 periments undertaken in 1895 by the writer 

 (Pringsheim's Jahrbiicher, 1897) were solely to 

 determine whether or not the nucleus is neces- 



