652 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 382. 



published every half century in order to 

 prevent the loss of copyright privileges 

 and scientific honors to an ungracious pos- 

 terity. 



HYPONYMS. 



A generic hyponym is a name not used 

 because inadequately published— that is, 

 not printed in connection vnth a recog- 

 nized species. Again will the consistently 

 literary botanist insist that the earlier 

 writers studied and described their genera 

 quite apart from species, and that it is an 

 empirical and revolutionary proposition 

 which would set aside tradition and usage 

 and insist upon the arbitrary requirement 

 of a generic type. This, however, is but 

 an obvious corollary of the taxonomie 

 principle that genera should not be studied 

 and named as concepts, but as groups of 

 species. Moreover, the regulation which it 

 has been sought to enforce under the meth- 

 od of concepts, that a generic name must 

 be accepted which was accompanied by 

 anything whatever in the way of descrip- 

 tion, is equally arbitrary and has a fatal 

 lack of practical utility, since most of the 

 older descriptions are utterly inadequate 

 for diagnosis under modern classification. 

 That the generic descriptions had come to 

 be recognized as a mere formality which 

 could even be entirely dispensed with, was 

 well shown, quite apart from the method 

 of types, by the selection of the ' Species 

 Plantarum ' of Linnseus as the initial work 

 of reference for botanical nomenclature.- 

 This book contains no descriptions of gen- 

 era, but it was very properly held that the 

 genera could be much more satisfactorily 

 inferred from the species than from the de- 

 scriptions given in Linnceus ' ' Genera 

 Plantarum.' 



Some naturalists who have appreciated 

 the hollowness of the idea that a mere se- 

 ries of words must be taken as establish- 

 ing a generic name in full nomenclatorial 

 standing, are inclined to insist that genera 



must really be described so as to in some 

 measure approximate modern ideas, even 

 though this would require the abandon- 

 ment of many well-known names of the 

 large composite genera of the older au- 

 thors. However logical this procedure 

 may be, the general application of it could 

 only result in increased confusion, since 

 there is not the smallest probability of 

 agreement among naturalists as to liow 

 much of a desci'iption is necessary to the 

 diagnosis of any particular genus or other 

 natural group. 



The formal requirement of a descrip- 

 tion for a species has a far more logical 

 justification. An identifiable species lo- 

 cates at once one point in a genus, but sub- 

 sequent students may have no clue to an 

 uncharacterized species. It is thus a mat- 

 ter of expediency as well as of right to 

 reject specific names not accompanied by 

 descriptions, though such a practice will 

 lead to confusion unless it be applied only 

 to actual nomina nuda; far too many 

 changes and disagreements would appear 

 if the question of the adequacy of specific 

 descriptions were to be raised. Practical 

 legislation must, of necessity, converge 

 upon technical points, and the utility of 

 any enactment depends upon reducing the 

 number and making plain the location of 

 these foci. Biologically a genus is gener- 

 ally a group of species, but nomenelatori- 

 ally it may always be narrowed to a single 

 species, and under a binomial system to 

 a single binomial species, which must 

 have nomenclatorial status before it can 

 be made the basis of a nomenclatorially 

 valid generic name. 



The limitation of taxonomie recognition 

 to generic names established in connection 

 ^vith identifiable binomial species would 

 be a most useful regulation since it would 

 dismiss to final oblivion a large number of 

 still-born names which for a century or 

 more were passed over by botanists, but 



