2l6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



plant-naming of Fuchsius. As already indicated he heads each 

 chapter with the Greek name of the genus, unless perchance the 

 plant was unknown to the Greeks and has no Greek name; then 

 ' the Latin name is used. For every one the Latin and the German 

 synonyms are given, and that in the first paragraph of the chapter, 

 under the caption " Nomina. " Still more carefully considering the 

 convenience of pharmacists and the untutored collectors of simples, 

 he causes to be printed on each plate the Latin name of the species 

 at the lower left-hand comer, and at the right-hand corner the Ger- 

 man. Quite as we expect to find it, we read on plates representing 

 monotypic genera no name at all but the generic. Commonly such 

 names consist of but one word. Such are Adiantum, Althcea, Anethum, 

 Asarum, Asparagus, and scores of others as familiar and as ancient. 

 But there is also no dearth of purely generic names for monotypic 

 genera that are of two terms. There are Acorus officinarum, 

 Tagetes Indica, Plantago aquatica, Aster Atticus, Barba Capri, Vitis 

 vinifera, Vitis alba, Vitis nigra, Viola purpurea ( = Viola), Viola 

 alba {=Matthiola), and very many more like these. There is no 

 ground for questioning that every one of these names is purely 

 generic. There is no warrant for denominating so much as one of 

 them "a pre-Linnaean binomial," that is, a name of which the 

 first word is, in the accepted sense, generic, the second specific. 

 Names binary, and of just this last named quality do also abound 

 in Fuchsius ; but these now cited, and also a host of others like them, 

 have nothing in them of the generico-specific meaning which all 

 binaries in use to-day convey, and are understood to convey. 

 Now that Fuchsius does not mean by Plantago aquatica any species 

 of the genus Plantago is put beyond all doubt or cavil by the facts, 

 first, that he takes it as the topic of a chapter apart from that in 

 which Plantago proper is discussed' ; and second, that the officinal, 

 or more properly scientific (Greek) names heading the chapters are 

 totally distinct, the one being Arnoglosson, the other Alisma. 

 Concerning Vitis vinifera, now long in the status of a generico- 

 specific binary, it is as readily demonstrable that with Fuchsius it 

 is purely generic. Assuming that in primitive times the one word 

 Vitis — in Greek a /xtisXos — ^was, as it now again is become, the 

 generic name for grape-bearing shrubs, there came in later such 

 two-worded generic names as Vitis alba, Vitis nigra, Vitis IdcBa, 

 etc., each standing for a completely and widely different genus. 

 It is ea,sy to see that such multiplication of generic names beginning 



' Plantago (pi two species) is the topic of ch. xi, pp. 40, 41 ; Plantago 

 aqtiatica (monotypic) is of ch. xii, pp. 42, 43. 



