124 



THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



" Code of Botanical Nomenclature " signed by a number of Ameri- 

 can botanists and submitted to the Congress as a substitution 

 en bloc for the Code of 1867, We made some allusion to this in 

 our pages for 1904, and pointed out that, while very carefully drawn 

 up, it embodied certain principles, such as that of "priority of 

 place," which would hardly be accepted, as indeed they were not. 

 If, as Prof. Piper's action seems to indicate, transatlantic botanists 

 do not fall in with the decisions arrived at by the international 

 assembly after very careful discussion, the confusion which we 

 common with most botanists — had hoped was at an end will still 

 prevail so far as American plants are concerned. It is not even 

 as though the American botanists presented an undivided front; 

 there are conspicuous omissions from the list of signatories to the 

 * 4 Philadelphia Code," so that it may be feared that even in Ameri- 

 can books uniformity will not be attained ; and in so far as this 

 is departed from, the Congress, influential and representative as 

 it was, must be regarded as having failed to obtain complete 

 success. 



Certain other peculiarities which have distinguished some 

 American authors are observable in Prof. Piper's book. The 

 system of trinominals is in full force, and it is thus impossible to 

 tell whether the plant represented by the second trivial is to be 

 considered a subspecies or a variety. Such a combination as 

 11 Festuca rubra hitaibeliana (Schultes) Piper, Contr. Nat. Herb. 10, 

 23, 1906," contains in itself objectionable features contrary to the 

 ruling of the Congress, which implicitly condemned trinominals, 

 laid down that * when two or more groups of the same nature are 

 united, the name of the oldest is retained " (Art. 46),* and that all 

 names derived from persons must be spelt with a capital letter. 

 The treatment of Festuca, by the way, throws a light on the value 

 to be attached to recent American creations, no fewer than six sup- 

 posed species being here placed as synonyms. 



In other respects the Rules are ignored ; we have duplicated 

 names — M Phegopteris phegopteris (L.) Underw." (note the omission 

 of the capital initial to the repeated name) ; and the generic names 

 which it was decided to abandon are in full force— how is Peramium 

 to be justified ? (see Journ. Bot. 1906, 396). 



We have noted in recent American floras the citation of what 

 is called the " type locality." This may be a useful innovation 

 when the locality is known, but Prof. Piper seems to regard it as 

 a necessary feature, with the result 11_: _ ' 1 ' 1 '" "" 



"Type locality, European " or « Type locality 

 Gallia.'" J * J 



that we get such entries as 

 locality, ' Habitat in Angha, 



The Festuca in question already possessed two varietal names— F. rubra 

 secunda Scribn. and F. rubra pubescent Vasey. The example given in the 

 Vienna Kules is " Ly thrum intermedium Ledeb. (Ind. Hort. Dorp. [1822]) re- 

 garded as a variety of L. Salicaria L. must be called L. Salicaria var. gracilis 

 Turcz. (in Bull. Soe. Nat. Moscou, xvii. 235 [1844]) not L. Salicaria var. inter- 

 medium Koehne (in Engl. Bot. Jahrb. i. 327 [1881])." 



