COMMENTARY. 89 



prevailed among botanists. The works of Hooker, De Can- 

 doUe, Endlicher, Martius, E. Brown, etc., being habitually 

 consulted, inconvenience would arise from any change in 

 the signification of the names applied by them to the groups, 

 supposing that a change could be effected, which appears 

 very doubtful. In general, it is easier to introduce a new 

 name than to alter the meaning of old ones. From these 

 different motives the majority in the Committee, and after- 

 wards the Congress itself, maintained the proposal to give 

 to associations of Orders the name of Cohorts, and to apply 

 to Orders the names of Ordines or Familise, indifferently. 



The word Cohort, OoAors, unquestionably good Latin, was 

 employed in this sense as far back as 1818, by De Can- 

 doUe ('Systenia,' i. p. 125), and in 1836 by Von Martius 

 (Conspectus Eegni Veget.). Messrs. Bentham and Hooker 

 have adopted it in their ' Genera Plantarum.' We think it 

 preferable to the word class, usually taken for divisions of 

 greater importance, and to the word allicmce,, of Lindley, 

 which cannot be so conveniently translated by an analogous 

 word in Latin, foedus having quite another form. Oohors is of 

 easy introduction into modern languages, without alteration 

 or with a slight change in the final. 



9. Division of species acquires every day more import- 

 ance. Some botanists call in question the characters at- 

 tributed to the Species by others, but no one can deny the 

 existence of collective groups of the nature of those callea 

 species by Linnaeus; and they cannot but allow, at the same 

 time, that there are many other inferior groups, especially 

 among cultivated plants. If the heredity of the forms 

 was always clear and well determined, the division of 

 species would be easy. We should have, firstly, races 

 that might likewise be termed chief varieties, or sub- 

 species J and secondly, non-hereditary varieties. But there 

 is a tendency to heredity in all the forms, only it may be 

 more or less constant, more or less complete. When a modi- 

 fication of a species is habitually hereditary, it becomes, 

 properly speaking, a subspecies, in other words, there may 

 be hesitation as to whether it ought not to be called a 



