﻿28 KEVISiO GENERtJItf PLANTARUM. 



resuscitated them. Genera unprovided with specific names are 

 incomplete, and can only enter into competition with others when 

 properly equipped. 



On page 346 Dr. Kuntze proceeds to criticise the prospectus of 

 the Index K»',rcnsi.s by this time he probably realises that it would 

 have been wiser to wait for a fuller knowledge of the work before 

 thus hastily passing judgment. Dr. Kuntze had formed his own 

 idea of what the work would be, and on its proving something 

 different he feels aggrieved. He has been lavish of advice of a 



suit his ideas only. Although he never saw Darwin, yet he pro- 

 fesses to know his wishes better than Sir Joseph Hooker, the life-long 

 and intimate friend. He regrets the retrograde step, as he terms 

 it, of not appending the full synonymy to each retained name, 

 alleging that the only reason can be to conceal the " true " name, 

 from the arbitrary one selected, a statement which would be 

 infamous were it not ridiculous, and oblivious of his having 

 acknowledged in 1890 that the Index would "not now be like 

 Steudel." He complains of the high price of the work, and 

 forthwith grumbles because it is not doubled in bulk, in cost, 

 and indefinitely delayed to suit his whims. (His own work is 

 relatively more than twice as costly.) The Index Kewensis does not 

 pretend to supersede all research, nor to be that impossibility, 

 a critical and immaculate investigation of the whole field of 

 phanerogamic literature. It is intended to fulfil a more modest 

 part, that of guiding seekers to the place of publication, with an 

 indication of the probable affinities of each entry. 



It does not need much wit to understand why it was possible to 

 give the sunk genera under the retained ones ; in the main it stood 

 ready to hand in Bentham and Hooker's Genera, but the essential 

 reason is, that users of the Index may readily turn to the correlated 

 genera to find species not yet named in the accepted genera. 

 Especial care has been exercised not to coin new names or new 

 combinations, in direct contrast to Steudel's method of book- 

 reduction. A standard, critical list of genera and species, which 

 should be free from error and acceptable to all botanists, is at once 

 as desirable and as hopeless as a universal language, or the abolition 



We also find in Dr. Kuntze's pages a renewed list of suggestions 

 as to writing names, amongst which occurs the bad one that no 

 distinction should be made in indexes between I and J : that is, 

 because the German printers confuse them, other nations ac- 

 customed to a better method should lake a step backward. In the 

 two other "international" languages, as Dr. Kuntze delights to call 

 them, French and English, those two letters are perfectly distinct, 

 an overwhelming preponderance of two to one. A final attempt to 

 compromise matters, by fixing the date of starting at 1737, the 

 first edition of Linnseus's Genera, is thrown out, the author making 

 a bid for it by stating that less alteration will be occasioned by this 

 date than by 1753 ; this seems paradoxical on the face of it, and 

 will hardly persuade anyone. Anyhow, it ensures the disappear- 



