one under which it was at first placed. The framer of the new com- 

 posite name can be recognised, whenever it seems desirable, by adding 

 on his name to that of the author of the species, thus : 



Plagiothecium denticulatum (L.) Schimp., 



which is becoming the practice of every cryptogamist of repute, as it 

 has been for some time of all zoologists, whose usages it ill becomes 

 botanists to pretend to ignore. The contrary practice may tend to the 

 glorification of the author who puts his own name alone to an old species 

 in a new genus, but it certainly involves confusion to the student; of 

 which we have a flagrant example in the monograph of Euphorbiaceae, 

 contributed by John Miiller of Aargau to Decandolle's 'Prodomus,' 

 where even Linnreus is robbed of his well-established names — some- 

 times generic as well as specific — and we read, for instance, of Ricinus 

 communis Miill Arg.! ! 



I believe it is DecandoUe who recommends us "never to make an 

 author say what he did not mean to say.'\j Verily a good maxim ! Let 

 us apply it in a case of my own. When I returned to civilization and 

 modern botanical literature, after 15 years' wandering in the wilds of 

 South America, I found hepaticologists writing '' Harjmnthus scutatus 

 Spruce," and ^' SarcocyjyJms adustus Spruce;" but I had never said that, 

 and never meant to say it. In my memoir on Pyrenean Mosses I had 

 assigned to these two siDecies the authority of their founders, thus : 

 '' Harpantlius (scutatus Web. et Mohr)" and " Sarcoscyphus (adustus Nees);" 

 for I was not the author of either the generic or specific names, and all 

 I had done was to take the species out of genera to which they did not 

 belong and put them in their proper place ; but I did not think that 

 gave me any right to arrogate the names to myself, and to quite ignore 

 their actual founders. 



It is further to be noted that in Hepaticse the great bulk of the species 

 stood until quite recent times in a single genus, Jungermania ; in Musci 

 fnot quite so recently, but still within the memory of veterans of the 

 science) in Hyjmum and Br yum; and in Lichenes in the solitary genus 

 Lichen. It is therefore essential to the student to know in what author 

 he may find the orginal definition of (for instance) Jungermania biden- 

 tata, and often of slight (or of no) importance to him to know who first 

 called it Loplwcolea bidentata."^' 



