38 LAWS OF NOMENCLATURE. 



sanction any gross error merely for the sake of adhering to 

 habit. It must likewise be borne in mind that exceptions 

 established by custom^ being exceptions after all, must neither 

 be imitated nor extended. This is one of the common prin- 

 ciples of law. 



8. The word family has been found a happy onej the 

 genus is, however, that which bears most analogy to a human 

 family, all the individuals that compose it bearing the same 

 name, each of them having, besides, a Christian name ana- 

 logous to a specific one. Linnaeus used the word familia, 

 which has the fault of not being very good Latin. The 

 generality of botanists have preferred the term ordo, though, 

 in ordinary language, the French and the Germans saj family. 

 The English alone commonly employ the word order. The 

 objection that may be made to it is its double signification 

 in all languages. In French, at least, where style and pre- 

 cision of terms are so much attended to, a phrase such as 

 this, " Le jardin de . . . est arrange dans I'ordre des Ordres 

 de Jussieu," would appear somewhat ridiculous. A more 

 serious objection has been made to the use of the word ^order' 

 as a synonym of ' family,' namely, that zoologists apply it 

 to a group superior in rank to families. Orders, in zoo- 

 logy, answer to what some botanists call cohorts ; to what 

 Lindley termed alliances. This divergency was clearly 

 pointed out by M. Gustav Planchon,i and the word ordo had 

 been previously employed by M. Dumortier" in the same 

 sense as it is used by zoologists ; but nevertheless the custom 

 of assimilating thewords order and family, especially the Latin 

 word ordo to the word 'family' in French and in German, has 



» G. Planchon, ' Les Principes de la M^thode Naturelle," Thesis, 

 8vo. Montpellier, 1860. 



» Dumortier, ' Analyse des Families des Plantes,' Svo, Tournay, 

 1829. See likewise a note of the same in the Proceedings of the Con- 

 gress, on occasion of the discussion on this point. Independently of 

 what is relative to the use of the word Order, this able author sets 

 forth ideas on the manner of characterizing groups of families by 

 means of what he terms synthesis; but this is a question quite inde. 

 pendent of nomenclature. 



