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BOTANICAL NOMENCLATURE. 



[The following important memorandum has been sent out from 

 Berlin by a Committee consisting of Profs. Ascherson, Engler, 

 Schumann, and Urban, and has already obtained the signatures of 

 a large number of botanists. We may take occasion to comment 

 upon it later ; but it seems well to reproduce it at once, in order 

 that our readers may consider the principles it lays down. 

 The list of genera which is appended to the memorandum is 

 presumably not intended to be complete, so we do not reproduce it. 

 Adhesions should be sent to Prof. Engler, Potsdainerstrasse 73, 

 Berlin.] 



Since the time of Linnaeus, botanists have continually en- 

 deavoured to gain a uniform nomenclature, and these endeavours 

 were completely justified on account of an easier mutual under- 

 standing. We know very well that certain differences will always 

 remain, because the decision on soma questions only depends on 

 the author's subjective opinion. But we hope that a gradual 

 and continual reformation will bring an essential improvement. 

 0. Kuntze's Revisio Generum has raised an evident perturbation, 

 and will cause a complete confusion ; therefore we thought it 

 necessary to propose the following four resolutions, which refer 

 only to the genera : 



I. The starting-point of the priority of the genera as well as 



the species is the year 1752, resp. 1753. 

 II. Nomina nuda and seminuda are to be rejected. Pictures 



alone, without diagnoses, do not claim any priority of a 

 genus. 



III. Similar names are to be conserved, if they differ by ever 



so little in the last syllable; if they only differ in the 

 mode of spelling, the newer one must fall. 



IV. The names of the following larger or universally known 



genera are to be conserved, though after the strictest rules 

 of priority they must be rejected; in many of them the 

 change of the names now used is by no means sufficiently 

 proved. 



Ad L After Alph. DeCandolle had proposed to take the year 

 1737 as the starting-point of the priority of genera, many botanists 

 had acknowledged it. But we think that the turning-point from 

 the ancient botany to our modern science rests in the introduction 

 of the binomial nomenclature. Therefore we propose, after a pre- 

 vious communication with Alph. DeCandolle, to remove the starting- 

 point for both, the species as well as the genera, as far as to the 

 year 1753, resp. 1752, date of the Species Piantarum, ed, 1 (1753), 

 with the 4th ed. of the Genera Piantarum (1752). Before that time, 

 the scientific position of Linnzeus is not superior to Tournefort, 

 Rivinus, and many other botanists, who often had described and 

 segregated the genera more exactly than he did. 



Ad II. Many genera have been founded on a picture only, 

 without a diagnosis. No doubt, by means of it a species sometimes 



Journal of Botany. — Vol. 30. [Aug. 1892.] s 



