146 



in botany the name and services of a man so rarely accomplished 

 in dendrology and the noble art of landscape-gardening as An- 

 drew Jackson Downing. 



Moreov-er, Doctor Torrey's occasion for thus honoring Downing 

 in the proposed name for this particular genus was an interesting 

 one, and particularly instructive in its bearing upon the principles 

 of botanical nomenclature ; all the more interesting since it reveals 

 him as acting firmly, vigorously and without hesitation upon 

 what he regarded as an intolerably vicious innovation in nomen- 

 clature, and this at a time which antedates all legislation, so- 

 called, on the nomenclature of botany. 



The genus which Doctor Torrey wished should bear the name 

 Doxvningia had, to his knowledge, been twice named already. 

 At the moment of his writing it was currently received as the 

 genus Clintoiiia. He knew that, because of the existence of that 

 name as applied to another genus of earlier date, the present 

 Cliutouia, as a name, was null and void. He was also aware that 

 an eminent botanist in Europe, while attempting to displace the 

 honion)-mous Cliiitonia, had made matters worse rather than 

 better by dedicating this also to De Witt Clinton under the name 

 Wittia ; so that by this curious arrangement Clinton would have 

 commemoration in botany b}' two genera, Clintonia Raf , and Wittia 

 Kunth. Doctor Torrey, therefore, governed by that mere good 

 sense which had precluded from the minds of all great botanists 

 before him for two thousand years the very idea of dedicating 

 two genera to one man, proposed the new name Do7^'ningia for 

 Lindley's Clintonia and Kunth's Wittia in the same confidence 

 with which he would have assigned the new name to an entirely 

 new and nameless generic type. In the Pacific Railway Report, 

 already cited by me in various places, his comment on the action 

 is this : "It would be inadmissible to bestow two genera on the 

 same person." 



At the time of his writing Doctor Torrey must have been un- 

 aware that Dozi'iiingia, even when newly published, was at once a 

 synonym by virtue of Rafinesque's Bolelia and Gynavipsis.'^ 

 But the moment has seemed opportune for bringing to the notice 



*See Piitonia, 2 : 124. 



