BOTANICAL NOMENCLATURE. 293 



remarks at the outset of his argument, " The vexed questions 

 connected with botanical nomenclature have been for the most part 

 settled in Europe by the adoption of the % Laws ' formulated by M. 

 DeCandolle," but, if these recommendations actually mean what he 

 supposes they do, we can hardly regard this statement as justified 

 while anthologists at Berlin, Paris, and other continental centres 

 of botanical activity, several of the monographers of the new 

 DeCandolle series, and of that greatest botanical work, Martius' 

 'Flora Brasiliensis,' Boissier, a countryman and neighbour of 

 DeCandolle, Lindberg in Finland, Braithwaite and Spruce in 

 England, and indeed all bryologists, mycologists, and algologists 

 the world over use the earliest specific name as permanent ! Nor 

 can it, I think, be argued that it is being settled in the way he 

 would have it, for the recommendations of the Paris Congress date 

 from 1867, while there is at the present time an increasing tendency 

 towards the recognition and maintenance of the earliest specific 

 name. Indeed the practice has been followed in the most recent 

 British Local Flora. 



But do these laws prohibit the invariable use of the earliest 

 specific name, or the parenthetical citation of the original author ? 

 Article 48 is quoted to show that they do, and as it is the only one 

 which bears directly on the question, I will quote it also : — " For 

 the indication of the name or names of any group to be accurate 

 and complete, it is necessary to quote the author who first published 

 the name or combination of names in question." Will our learned 

 critic perhaps tell us in what way we have transgressed this law ? 

 It seems to me that, in citing both the original author of the 

 specific name and that of the accepted binomial, we obey that law 

 to the letter, for we quote both the authors of the name and of the 



combination of names. 



It is true that in his commentary on this article M. DeCandolle per- 

 sonally does not favour the practice, but the only objection he has to 

 make to the form Matthiola tri$ti*(L.), Brown, is that "the parenthesis 

 has first to be explained." Certainly we have to explain all symbols 

 to a person first learning, but once explained, it is understood that 

 Linnaeus made the name and Brown the binomial. He further 

 states that M the reader, having learnt that Linmeus made only the 

 specific name, wishes to know under what generic name." An 

 excellent result, if it really has that effect, which we somewhat doubt. 



But the whole matter had been ably discussed long before the 

 time of the Paris Congress. The Stricklaudian Code adopted by 

 the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1842 

 was in 1845 discussed by the Association of American Geologists 

 and Naturalists, and adopted with but few changes; and in the 

 published report of their Committee (reprint, p. 7) we find : — 



§ 9. " It is recommended that the original authority of a species 

 should always follow the name in brackets, and if the name be sub- 

 sequently altered, the authority for the same be added without 

 brackets. It has been common for systematists to change a generic 

 name, and then to add their own name to all the species. To 

 prevent this injustice, which is no less than a kind of piracy, the 



