26 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



'3. 



THE NEW RULES FOR NOMENCLATURE. 



Our readers are now in possession of the Eules for Nomen- 

 clature adopted by the International Botanical Congress at Vienna 

 in 1905, which were issued as a Supplement to last year's 

 Journal and may be obtained separately as a shilling pamphlet, 

 and will thus be enabled to see for themselves the verdict upon 

 the discussions which have been for some years past carried 

 on in this Journal and elsewhere. Whatever opinion may be 

 formed as to details, it is, as we have already said, desirable in the 

 interests of uniformity and convenience that these Eules should be 

 implicitly followed. The conclusions as a whole are eminently 

 sane and reasonable — the ridiculous claim of " priority of place " 

 and the duplication of names in the style of Linaria Linaria are 

 ruled out of court, and the foolish distinction by which the 

 adjectival form of the name of a person is spelt with a small letter 

 while its substantive form has a capital is set on one side. The 

 greatest possible care has been taken in defining the Eules and 

 their application, and although the " recommendations" have pr 

 sumably not the same binding force as the Eules themselves, we 

 think that they will be generally accepted. The use of carefully 

 chosen u examples " helps to the ready understanding of the Eules 

 in their application. 



The most important decision is that which asserts the supremacy 

 of the earliest specific name, no matter under what genus it may 

 have been used. In this Journal we have always maintained 

 that the earliest combination under the accepted genus should be 

 adopted, and as a matter of opinion we still consider that the more 

 reasonable and satisfactory mode of procedure. But the great 

 thing is to arrive at finality, and this can be done by the rule 

 adopted. This will of course lead to numerous changes which must 

 for a time cause inconvenience ; but the fact that, this done satis- 

 factorily, the names arrived at will be permanently fixed, will com- 

 pensate for this. 



A less satisfactory feature of the Rules — indeed, the only one to 

 which serious exception can be taken- — is the adoption and authori- 

 zation of the "Index nominum genericorum utique eonservandum 

 which was appended to the draft copy sent round for discussion 

 before the Conference took place ; the published account of the 

 discussion regarding it shows that a considerable minority— 37 as 

 against 118 — objected to its adoption. We entirely agree with Mr. 

 Coville that this decision is the weakest taken by the Congress; a 

 very slight investigation shows that the list is far from complete, 

 and it is open to future Congresses to extend it. We have always 

 protested against the arbitrary closure proposed in various forms 

 by German botanists as being an infringement of the law of priority 

 which in our judgement should alone govern nomenclature, and we 

 fail to see what gain can result from the adoption of the Harms 

 list, if it is to be regarded as capable of indefinite extension in the 

 future. We think that, as the list has been adopted, it should be 



