853 
BOTANICAL NOMENCLATURE 
By Asa Gray, LL.D., F.R.S., &c. 
In the October number of the ‘ Journal of Botany’ I find that 
my fellow-countryman, Professor Edward Lee Greene, criticises 
and objects to the course which the Kew ‘ Index of Plant-names’ 
is to follow, namely, that it “is to take the name under which 
any given plant is first placed in its true genus as the name to be 
kept up, even although the author of it may have ignored the 
proper rule of retaining the specific name when transferring it 
from its old genus to the new.” 
As this rule of adhering to the prior tenable name and of dis- 
‘Journal of the Linnean Society,’ vol. xvii. p. 197, Mr. Bentham 
says :— 
‘‘There is one practice which has grown up of late years, 
genera to which, rightly or wrongly, it has been referred... ... 
hen a otanist dism old 
syn thout any advantage whatever, and is not even re- 
ring an old name, for the specific adjective is not of itself the 
name of a plant A generic name is sufficiently indicated by 
one substantive, forno two genera in the vegetable kingdom are 
allowed to have the same name: but for a species the combination 
of the substantive and adjective is absolutely necessary; the two- 
worded specific name is one and indivisible, and the combining o 
the substantive of one name with the adjective of another is not 
preserving either of them, but creates an absolutely new name, 
which ought not to stand unless the previous ones were vicious in 
themselves, or preoccupied, or referred to a wrong genus. It is 
Probably from not perceiving the difference between making and 
changing a name that the practice objected to has been adopted by 
Some of the first among recent botanists, such as W: : thou 
under protest (see the note in DC. Prod. xvii. i. 78). To give a 
Journat or Borany.—-Vou. 25. [Dec., 1887.] 2a 
