Apeil 25, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



65c 



which the injudicious zeal of recent re- 

 formers has resurrected and attempted to 

 galvanize to the life of modern taxonomy. 

 The Rochester Rules were avowedly drawn 

 to enact a law of priority under the bi- 

 nomial system of nomenclature, although, 

 to give a definite point of departure, it was 

 agreed to disregard the hundreds of bi- 

 nomials published before 1753. Every 

 principle of logic and every practical con- 

 sideration would have led us to expect the 

 acceptance of the obvious corollary of that 

 proposition— the rejection of the non- 

 binomial literature published after that 

 date. This simple distinction having been 

 neglected, we have only the no longer log- 

 ical but purely arbitrary 1753 rule to keep 

 us from the older polynomial literature, 

 to say nothing of the many pre-Linnaean 

 books in which binomials were used. The 

 process of restoring Adanson's names is 

 only just begun in dealing with the botany 

 of North America. There are pages and 

 pages of the closely printed lists of the 

 ' Families ' as yet not drawn upon by our 

 antiquarian friends, but the zest with 

 which they have delved in this debris only 

 shows what would be their delight in first- 

 class cemeteries like Micheli and Tourne- 

 fort, if indeed they would remain content 

 with these and not insist on pushing back 

 to a more obscure antiquity. Seriously, 

 however, the reinstatement of these Adan- 

 sonian and similarly unattached and long- 

 forgotten names is an utterly needless im- 

 position contrary to the spirit in which 

 the reform attempted at Rochester and 

 Springfield was encouraged and supported 

 by the botanical public. 



CACONYMS. 



This necessity of some provision for the 

 more definite limitation of taxonomie lit- 

 erature on the sides of Latinity, brevity 

 and binomiality can be made even more 

 obvious by reference to a neglected contri- 



bution to the botany of Mexico, the work 

 of Francisco Hernandez : ' De Historia 

 Plantarum Novte Hispaniae.' This was 

 published in Madrid in 1790 from manu- 

 scripts written in the sixteenth century. 

 It records names for toward a thousand 

 genera of Mexican plants and antedates a 

 large part of the current systematic botany 

 of that and the neighboring regions. The 

 three quarto volumes contain a total of 

 1,611 pages, and are written in Latin 

 throughout, with the adoption of the Aztec 

 names which stand either alone or in the 

 form of binomials. Thus the first chapter 

 is headed : ' De Apitzalpatli crenata, seu 

 de herba seeta per ambitum fluxum alvi 

 cohibente. ' Then follow ' Apitzalpatli al- 

 tera, Apitzalpatli Uyauhtepecensi, Apitzal- 

 patli Tehoitztlac, Apitzalpatli Teuhaltzin- 

 censi,' and others equally unmanageable by 

 the tongues of European peoples, though 

 differing only in degree from Thlaspi, Ga- 

 jati, Alhagi, Tsubaki, Tsjinkin, Hombak, 

 Sinapi, Gansblum, Konig, Korosvel, Can- 

 schi, Malagu, Coddampulli, Mangostan, 

 Japarandi, Celeri, Choeho, Mokos, Agialid, 

 Tsususi, and hundreds of others which have 

 not prevented the recent resurrection of 

 the taxonomy of Adanson's 'Families,' in 

 spite of the fact that it had been almost 

 universally ignored for upward of a cen- 

 tury. An objection might be taken to the 

 specific names of Hernandez because his 

 work is not consistently bionomial, but the 

 fact that he so frequently uses names of 

 that form would seem to give his generic 

 designations a better claim to recognition 

 than those of the strictly monomial Adan- 

 son, or those of the numerous polynomial 

 post-Linnaean writers like Haller. But 

 however effective such reasoning might be 

 if Apitzalpatli stood alone or with a few 

 similar terms, the fiercest Adansonians may 

 well quail before what Hernandez was able 

 to transcribe after he had acquired more 

 fluency in Aztec: Tlalaxixquilitl, Tlalte- 



