62 BAILEY— SOME PRESENT NEEDS [Ap"i 23, 



author in effect a part of the name. When the combination of two 

 words was held to constitute the name of a plant, the author of 

 the combination was sufficient for identification ; but with the single- 

 word system we carry the author of both the original specific name 

 and of the new combination, and the whole becomes something like 

 a complicated formula. This is a convenience to the worker with 

 plant names, but he is not the only party concerned ; his needs may 

 be served in the citation of the synonomy. His obligation to the 

 public is to present the simplest possible name and the least in- 

 volved. If the history is to be retained in the name-compound, 

 where may we not stop and how complicated may our formulse 

 finally become? We may in time evolve a phraseology, or an alge- 

 braic form, as complicated as some of the pre-Linnsean customs. 

 We are really confusing two things, — nomenclature and bibliog- 

 raphy. We should separate citation from nomenclature. We have 

 no right to inflict the public with our taxonomic book-keeping. 



There are three pressing needs in our present systematic botany, 

 as I see it. One of these needs I have now tried to suggest, which 

 is the urgency to subordinate the nomenclature question. This is 

 specially important in a democracy, where we desire to give all 

 qualified persons equal chance, where we are supposed to remove 

 hindrances and arbitrary domination by central authorities and to 

 allow the people to express themselves freely. The public has real 

 rights in the names of plants. Soon we must stop playing with 

 names. 



A Situation as to Species and Genera. 



The oversight that we assumed in the beginning would undoubt- 

 edly discover other interesting situations in our systematic work. 

 What these comparisons might be would depend, of course, on the 

 particular person who made them ; but in respect to the American 

 work, with which at the moment we are mostly concerned, any per- 

 son could not fail to admire the quality of the monographs and 

 lesser contributions. Although systematic botany may occupy a 

 subordinate place in our teaching, it is receiving extensive and very 

 expert attention both from amateurs and from those attached offi- 

 cially to the great collections, and the published work is such as to 



