328 BOTANICAL NOMENCLATURE IN NORTH AMERICA. 



Moneses 



Dr. Gray, as long ago as 1847, set aside his English namesake's M. 

 grandifiora (S. F. Gray, Nat. Am. ii. 403), and rehabilitated the little 

 plant in its old Linn&an (yea, pre-Linnaean) specific name, making 

 the new combination Moneses unifiora A. Gray. And these which I 

 cite are but fair samples of Dr. Gray's occasional practice when the 

 species are old, and have received several specific names. What- 

 ever may have induced him now and then, in critical essays, to 

 write in disparagement of this usage, one who studies him in his 

 books and monographs must see that he not only had a very strong 

 predilection for the oldest specific names, but was willing to trans- 

 gress rules which he professed to respect and be governed by, in 

 order to keep such names in use. 



Dr. Watson, who is also cited as if exemplifying more approved 

 methods in nomenclature, has made himself, in some of his pages, 

 a luminous example of our "new school" usage. For a good 

 illustration, we have but to advert to his readjustments in the 

 specific nomenclature of Onayracea, in the first volume of the 

 Botany of California. Spach, in proposing the genera Godetia and 

 Douduvalia, had dropped a number of very old specific names 

 which the plants had been known by under Oenothera; and Dr. 

 Watson, with what we, his American colleagues, consider a com- 

 mendable zeal for thorough priority, restored those old neglected 

 names, every one ; and so we read, in the place referred to, Godetia 

 purpurea Watson instead of the much older combination G. 

 Wilidmoviana Spach, G. tmeUa Watson instead of G. Cavanillesii 



Spach, Boisdiualia densiflora Watson in place of B. Daugladi Spach, 

 and so on. 



I shall be far from asserting that our elders have followed this 

 rule. On some of their pages they conform to this, on others to 

 some other, and the having of so many rules is equivalent to having 

 none at all. That this is the true condition of botanical nomen- 

 clature in America, with all authors, up to a somewhat recent date, 

 one has but to look into our most pretentious treatises to see. I 

 have been constrained lately to remark this unhappy fact.t For 

 any two or three botanists to have settled down to any one 

 particular usage, or to have subjected themselves to any code 

 whatever, would have been to form, in America, a "new school." 

 A number of us younger workers have, in so far as I know, without 

 any mutual understanding or agreement, one after another, placed 

 ourselves under obedience to the simple law of priority in nomen- 

 clature ; and, be our action commendable or be it deprecable, it 

 does, we confess it, place us in contrast with the earlier generation, 

 whose misfortune ft may have been to have had us in training. 



* Bull. Torr. Club, 1888, p. 230. t 'Pittonia,' i. p. 185. 



