Ixxviii PROCEEDINGS OP THE 



especially with regard to that personal rather than scientific ques- 

 tion, Wlioso name or whose initial letters should, in the binomial 

 nomenclature, be added to the double name of a species (generic and 

 specific) to distinguish it from others which may have received the 

 same name from other quarters ? M. A. De CandoUe having raised a 

 discussion on this and some other points, he was requested to bring 

 the whole subject before the meeting of the Botanical Qongress at 

 Paris last summer. He accordingly reduced the most generally ac- 

 knowledged regulations to the form of a body of laws, which was 

 laid before the Congress, modified, but perhaps not improved, in 

 some small details in the discussion which ensued, and finally put to 

 the vote, and adopted, as I believe, unanimously by the gentlemen 

 present. These ' Laws of botanical nomenclature ' 'have since been 

 published in French and in English, and fonn an excellent guide, 

 which it is sincerely to be Avished that systematic botanists would 

 conform to. In submitting to it, our reliance would be rather on the 

 great knowledge of the subject, the experience and judgment of 

 M. De Candolle, than on the fiat of a body of men, which those who 

 were not present do not seem generally disposed to acknowledge. 

 Two, indeed, of those who were actually present and joined in the 

 vote, M. Desmoulius of Bordeaux, and M. Crepin of Ghent, have 

 published long protests against the interpretation given in De Can- 

 dolle's commentary to the clause which regulates the above-men- 

 tioned disputed point, averring that, when they voted, they under- 

 stood it in a diametrically opposite sense. 



Of Boissior's ' Flora Orientalis,' the first volume, containing the 

 orders Avhich in the Candollean arrangement precede Legiiminoste, 

 has been published, and will be duly appreciated by all botanists as 

 the first complete and methodical account of all that is known of the 

 vegetation of that most interesting region vaguely designated as the 

 Levant or the East, the cradle of civilization, and the probable 

 scene of some of the earliest attempts at cultivation. To those who 

 are searching into the origin of our cultivated species, or who arc 

 attempting the identification of the plants mentioned in the biblical 

 and other early records, the accurate description of those now to be 

 found in the country is of the greatest importance ; and it is sincerely 

 to bo wished that M. Boissier's work may be vigorously prosecuted 

 and brought to an early conclusion. 



M. Casimir De Candolle, from his study of Piperacea) for the 

 * Prodromus,' has been led into various inquiries as to the arrange- 

 ment and formation of the organs of vegetation. His earlier paper 



