A POINT IN NOMENCLATURE 245 



more briefly than any description the practice against which, it is 

 suggested, some stand or protest should be made. It does not seem 

 to be explicitly condemned in the Vienna Rules, although Article 26 

 excludes it by implication. 



Mr. Burkill's recent paper "On Swertia angustifolia Ham. and 

 its Allies " (Journ. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, ii. no. 8, pp. 363-381, Aug. 

 1906) u is written to clear up a troublesome group in advance of an 

 enumeration of all the species of Asia and a discussion regarding 

 their distribution." Mr. Burkill has examined a vast mass of 

 material, and the botany of his paper may be accepted as satis- 

 factory : it is his nomenclature which is open to criticism. 



In the first place, however, it is desirable to correct a mis- 

 apprehension under which Mr. Burkill seems to labour with 

 reference to Hamilton's * plants. It does not appear that the 

 specimens sent by Hamilton to Lambert were " duplicate M ; David 

 Don describes them as "part of the fine collection of specimens 

 made during his residence in Nepal, in 1802-3." t They were at 

 any rate the types of the Prodromus Flora Nepalensis : Don in his 

 preface, having referred to Hamilton as one " qui plures plantas 

 detexit novas, et in herbarium siccatas collegit," continues : " Harum 

 maxima pars extat nunc in Museo cl. Aylmer Bourke Lambert, ima 

 cum notis sagacissimis et nominibus apud incolas vernaculis, propria 

 manu cl. D. Hamilton scriptis. Omnes attente observavi in Museo 

 Lambertiano; earumque descriptiones et methodica dispositio prse- 

 ciquam hujus opusculi partem constituunt." In the catalogue of 

 Lambert's sale is the entry: "This Herbarium of Hamilton's 

 supplied the materials for Prof. D. Don's Flora of Nepaul " ; it was 

 purchased for the British Museum for £9, and contained — according 

 to a MS. note by Mr. J. J. Bennett, who incorporated it with the 

 National Herbarium — "340 plants noticed in Prodr. FI. Nepal, 

 [these he indicated by » ticks ' in the margin of our copy of that 

 work] ; 105 Nepal plants not in that work ; 127 Indian plants 

 (excl. Nepal)." 



Mr. Burkill does not seem to have recognized that the National 

 Herbarium contains the type of S. angusti folia ; he quotes the 

 name angnstifolia as of " Hamilton ex D. Don," and does not cite 

 Hamilton's specimen as one that he has seen, although it is in 

 the National Herbarium named and localized by Hamilton him- 

 self. J He is probably right in supposing that Don had not seen a 

 type of Hamilton's S. yulchella, but Mr. Burkill himself must have 

 done so (though apparently without recognizing it) when he went 

 through our herbarium, where we have a specimen so named 

 collected by Hamilton in Mysore. 



* Mr. Burkill says " Francis Hamilton (afterwards Buchanan-Hamilton)," 

 having overlooked Colonel Prain's clear demonstration that the combination of 

 names is M erroneous and unnecessary " (Ann. Bot. Gard. Calc. x. 2, lxxv.). 



t Lambert, Pinus, ii., Appendix 16. 



I I note that Mr. Burkill, following the Index Fl. Sinensis, cites "Hance, 

 7561 ! " But the number of Hance's specimens in his herbarium— that cited 

 by himself when establishing his Ophelia vacillans (now referred to S. angnsti- 

 folia)— is 11387. 



