l8o SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54. 



idea, if one may intelligibly so speak, of taxonomy. It was because 

 this seemed to be true, that in our Introductory on the Philosophy of 

 Botanical History, the earliest available expressions of such idea by 

 even the primitive and the unlettered were dwelt upon somewhat at 

 length; and for the same reason, one desires to examine with the 

 utmost care leading expressions of the idea of a generic group as they 

 occur in this almost the earliest propagandist of what has slowly de- 

 veloped into the thing known as modem botany. Brunfels was of 

 thoroughly well educated mind, even a profound scholar, also natur- 

 ally endowed with a keen insight into the beauties and the harmonies 

 of plant life and form. On all these accounts it would be exceedingly 

 interesting, if it were possible, to know just what his own opinion 

 really was as to the philosophic tenability of such a genus as this 

 which we have been inspecting; a genus Urtica, by name, but 

 made up of species some of them urtical, but as many others labiate. 

 If he has any taxonomic opinion different from that which, in as far 

 as we have proceeded, he seems to have expressed, we shall be likely 

 to find the evidence of it, if there be any, by reading as it were 

 between the lines ; for even a botanical genius, if writing as Brunfels 

 professes to write, in the interests of medical botany only, inditing 

 a work the readers and students of which are to be the physicians 

 and the pharmacists, must not yield to every impulse he may feel to 

 improve taxonomy; for such improvement commonly involves 

 changes in nomenclature, and there is nothing of which the druggist, 

 or other plant industrialist, is more intolerant than changes in names 

 of his commodities. 



The opinion, if Brunfels held it, that nettles proper and labiate- 

 flowered nettles are generically distinct, was not original with 

 him. We observe that Dioscorides as long ago as the first cen- \ 

 tury of our era segregated the dead nettle as a genus, and under i 

 a name which pointed to the character of its flower, the name 

 Galeopsis; and this proposition had evidently been acceded to by 

 some of the mediaeval Latin botanists, who, instead of the Greek 

 yaXioipjs, had employed such Latin equivalents as Urtica mortua, 

 Urtica iners and Urtica labeo, the last a most significant appellation, 

 "nettle with a lip," evidently taking cognizance of the floral 

 character, while the other two refer merely to the lack of stinging 

 hairs. Now this mediaeval synonymy of the plants is perfectly 

 familiar to Brunfels. He formally quotes every item of it ; and his 

 approval of Galeopsis ' as a proper genus comes out plainly enough, 



■- In modern botany the genus is written Galeopsis. Dioscorides (Book x, 

 ch. 80) wrote it Galiopsis, as did also Brunfels. 



