14 



plants by the State botanist. As this review is being written 

 (Decernber ii) there are already ominous rumblings in that 

 periodic, but almost continuous, warfare between the rival 

 nomenclatorial camps, — a warfare as fratricidal and silly as 

 any ever known in botany. 



The reviewer once wrote in another connection "species and 

 varieties are concepts of convenience, nay, of absolute necessity, 

 in talking or writing about plants, but hardly expressions of 

 exact truth." But are species and varieties even concepts of 

 convenience when their names may be changed over night? 

 The ecologist, or physiologist, or cytologist, or what not, cares 

 not a straw whether systematic botanists bow down to the Gods 

 of Priority in New York or of Precedence in Boston, but they 

 are fast reaching the conclusion that unless systematic botanists 

 agree to bow down to the God of Convenience, and make that 

 adulation abject, they will pray for a quick finish fight, — and 

 dance rather indecently upon the grave of the loser. 



What all non-systematists pray for is that the gentlemen 

 in whose hands rest the destiny of plant names substitute for 

 their darling codes that kind of morality which understands 

 that nomenclature is first and last an absolutely necessary 

 convenience. What caters to that end is good, — all else is out- 

 side the pale. 



Dr. House appears to suffer, like so many of his colleagues, 

 from the uncertainty which this intolerable situation necessarily 

 entails. On one page we read of the common sense retention of 

 certain species names, hallowed by ages of use, while on another, 

 and there are a distressing number of these, he is abject in his 

 worship of priority, with disastrous consequences to equally 

 well-known names. Scores could be mentioned, let one suffice. 

 In 1923 the author felt moved to describe the white- flowered 

 form of the common marshmallow as Hibiscus Moscheutos 

 forma Peckii. That was unimpeachable, if one cares to designate 

 mere color forms by names. In the present volume he abandons 

 that recently christened infant because he takes up the Lin- 

 naean name H. palustris, and is, of course, forced to coin the new 

 combination Hibiscus palustris forma Peckii. There are also 

 many new names due to questions of interpretation of specific 

 limits. With such honest differences of opinion all botanists 

 will agree. Progress can only come from those able and willing 



