Mabch 10, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



341 



sentiments in so far as concerns changes of 

 names in groups of plants of which they 

 have no special knowledge. Several at- 

 tempts have been made to legislate upon 

 the subject of nomenclature. It has been 

 impossible thus far to frame a set of rules 

 to which all botanists can agree. There are 

 the rules of botanical nomenclature formu- 

 lated at the International Botanical Con- 

 gress held at Vienna in 1905. These rules 

 are often referred to as the Vienna Code. 

 To many competent botanists in both Eu- 

 rope and America these rules are so un- 

 satisfactory that they will not subscribe to 

 them. In this country many botanists 

 have agreed upon a code, usually known as 

 the American Code, which from the prac- 

 tical standpoint is more certain in its appli- 

 cation. These two codes provide that our 

 nomenclature shall begin with the year 

 1753, the date of the publication of the 

 first edition of the "Species Plantarum" 

 by Linnasus. There are still other botan- 

 ists who would throw aside all limitations 

 to the rule of priority and use the earliest 

 names to be found in literature. Kecently 

 some one proposed a new name for the 

 genus Zizania because Zizania of Linnseus, 

 the swamp grass called wild rice, is not the 

 same as Zizanion of the New Testament, 

 which is the name of the weed the enemy 

 came and sowed and which in our version 

 is called "tares." It is not my purpose 

 here to discuss these systems of nomencla- 

 ture. I am only calling attention to the 

 lack of unanimity on the subject among 

 taxonomists. But suppose all taxonomists 

 should agree upon a single system of nom- 

 enclature. Would this do away with the 

 changes of names? By no means. In the 

 first place it would take years to adapt the 

 hundreds of thousands of names of plants 

 to any code that might be adopted. But 

 aside from these changes coincident with 

 the search through countless books, pam- 



phlets and ephemeral sheets, some very 

 rare, some probably unknown to the present 

 generation of botanists, aside from these 

 changes due to the imperfections of our 

 records, there are other changes resulting 

 from the increase in our knowledge of 

 plants. Stability in nomenclature is unat- 

 tainable, just as stability or permanence in 

 any branch of learning is unattainable so 

 long as our knowledge concerning that 

 branch is increasing. Codes of nomencla- 

 ture enable botanists to make changes ac- 

 cording to definite rules, they do not 

 eliminate change. We shall have stability 

 01 nomenclature only when we have stabil- 

 ity of taxonomic ideas, which latter will 

 come only with infinite knowledge. 



This society includes a large percentage 

 of the botanists of this country, physiolo- 

 gists, morphologists, taxonomists, paleon- 

 tologists, ecologists, cytologists, anatomists, 

 geneticists, pathologists, but all botanists, 

 and all contributing to the upbuilding of 

 the science of botany. The society might 

 be compared to a living organism, in which 

 each botanist is performing a definite work 

 contributing to the success of the society, 

 even as each organ, or each cell, performs 

 a definite function necessary or helpful to 

 the life of the organism. By far the 

 greater part of our work consists in ac- 

 cumulating details. As a successful army 

 can not consist solely of generals, so a suc- 

 cessful botanical society can not consist 

 solely of philosophers. As the great gen- 

 eral is one with an extended knowledge of 

 the duties of his subordinates, so the true 

 philosophical botanist must be intimately 

 acquainted with much of the detail of the 

 worker, the drudgery of small things. 



When first we enter the realm of botan- 

 ical research we long in the impatience of 

 youth to make some great discovery, to 

 reach at a single bound the heights to which 

 others slowly toil. As we grow older we 



