Il6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



lie close to the two nearly ^related genera Cucurbita and Lagenaria. 

 Now for a third manner of using the word " kind," with a most dis- 

 tinct third meaning, the farmer shall say that he has a new kind 

 of squash. The botanist now has not the least doubt that the 

 genus Cucurbita is meant ; whether a species or a variety he can not 

 tell; but the expression "kind of squash" at once translates itself 

 into the school-taught expression, " species or variety otCucurbita." 



These three distinct old-fashioned uses of the word "kind" 

 illustrate well the different ways in which ancient Greeks and 

 Latins employed their word "genus." It is not a usage that makes 

 for that perspicuity which a science calls for. For three meanings, 

 three words are better than one. Nevertheless there is seldom 

 room for doubt in Theophrastus' writings as to whether by " genus" 

 he means such a group of species as we receive under that name, 

 or a more comprehensive, or a less comprehensive group; any more 

 than one well read in English fails to get the meaning of each of 

 the uses I have brought forward of the equivalent word "kind." 

 But the modern botanist who innocently should read into the 

 ; term genus of an ancient author always the meaning which it has 

 in modern botany would soon reduce his own mind to a state of 

 utter bewilderment as to the ancient author's meaning. I have 

 therefore been at the pains of making this attempt at an explana- 

 tion. Upon this and many another important matter of termin- 

 ology the historians have been silent. 



Employing now the word " genus " quite as used in modern botany 

 the genera of Theophrastus are numerous ; most of them obtaining 

 acceptance and holding their places in the systematic botany of 

 the present, most of them also bearing the same names under which 

 they were written about by him. This will be best shown by a 

 few examples, which I select from under the letters A and C of any 

 Latin index to his work: 



Abrotonum ^ Calamagrostis 

 ^ Acanthus Calamintha 



,,^ Aconitum _ Cedrus 



^gilops ^Celastrus 



'- Agrostis jCenchrus 



Aira Cerasus 



--Alopecurus Ceratonia 



^Althffia Cercis 



^nchusa ^ Chelidonium 

 Anemone Cissus 



