December 26, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



1035 



the article on ' Quadruped,' the adjective 

 ' mammalian.' 



I have already indicated that mammalians 

 had been used in translation of mammiferes. 

 The Eev. William Kirby, in 1835, in the once 

 famous Bridgenater treatise ' On the Povifer, 

 Wisdom and Goodness of God as manifested in 

 the Creation of Animals and in their History, 

 Habits and Instincts,' declined to use the form 

 mamjtnals, but invariably used, as the English 

 equivalent of Mammalia, ' Mammalians.' 

 Chapter XXIV. is entitled ' Functions and 

 Instincts. Mammalians ' ; in this, it is ex- 

 plained, ' the whole body, constituting the 

 Class, though sometimes varying in the man- 

 ner, are all distinguished by giving such to 

 their young, on which account they were de- 

 nominated by the Swedish naturalist, Mam- 

 malians' (II., p. 476). In a footnote to this 

 statement Kirby adds, ' Cuvier calls them 

 Mammifers, but there seems no reason for 

 altering the original term.' 



We may cordially endorse the sentiment of 

 Kirby and, doing so, refuse to follow him in 

 action and to adopt his modification of ' the 

 original term,' and revert to the genuine 

 original — mammals or, in the singular, mam- 

 mal. 



No instance of the use of the singular — 

 mammalian — has been found in Kirby's work 

 or in any of his successors', nor does the sin- 

 gular form mammal occur in the ' Pantologia.' 

 Theo. Gill. 



CosMo.s Club. Washington. 



THE STARTING POINT FOR GENERIC NOMENCLA- 

 TURE IN BOTANY. 



As the subject of generic nomenclature has 

 been considerably discussed of late, perhaps 

 it may not be inappropriate to call particular 

 attention to this phase of it. 



The uniformity and permanence of any 

 system of nomenclature must depend largely 

 upon the selection of a proper starting point. 

 The result of the application of any system of 

 fixing genera must vary as the initial date 

 varies. Hence it is of the utmost importance 

 whether we start with Tournefort, Linnaeus' 

 ' Genera Plantarum,' ' Spgcies Plantarum,' 

 ' Sy'stema Nature ' ed. 1, or ed. 10, as one 



zoological friend has suggested. The start- 

 ing point must, of course, be fixed more or 

 less arbitrarily, but we believe there are sev- 

 eral rational considerations which should in- 

 fluence the selection. Judging from past ex- 

 perience, no date is likely to meet with uni- 

 versal approval at present; but if the date be 

 chosen with proper regard for principles of 

 justice, rationality, and practicability it will 

 stand a reasonable chance of being generally 

 accepted in the future and of leading to that 

 uniformity and stability which are the great 

 desiderata at present. Some one has sug- 

 gested that to be in accord with these prin- 

 ciples we must simply begin at the beginning. 

 To this opinion we heartily subscribe. It is 

 necessary, however, to define just what we 

 mean by ' beginning ' and to inquire whether 

 there is anywhere in the course of the devel- 

 opment of the conception of genera a point 

 at which genera in anything like a modern 

 sense can be said to have originated. We 

 cannot agree with those who would attribute 

 this ' beginning ' to the ancient Greeks or 

 Romans, or even to the mediaeval and later 

 herbalists, though they contributed much to" 

 the development of the subject and in many 

 instances had rather well-defined ideas of 

 genera. There is, however, no one of them 

 that has defined and illustrated the genera 

 of the vegetable kingdom in general in such 

 a manner as to deserve the title of ' founder 

 of genera,' or as to furnish a practical basis 

 for generic nomenclature. This honor, we 

 believe, is reserved for Tournefort, who in 

 1700, in his great work ' Institutiones Eei 

 HerbariaB,' described and illustrated in a most 

 admirable manner nearly 700 genera, includ- 

 ing members of all the groups of the vege- 

 table kingdom. Here we have, I believe, the 

 earliest practical starting point for generic 

 nomenclature. Many of the systematists of 

 the past have tacitly recognized this fact by 

 crediting Tournefort and his prelinnsan suc- 

 cessors, Vailliant, Micheli, and Dillenius with 

 genera established by them. This practice 

 has, however, followed no particular or con- 

 sistent method. 



Let us consider for a moment the claims 

 to recognition of the different initial dates 



