48 LAWS OP NOMEXCLATTJEE. 



spring, has been long since called into question ; and this was 

 one of the motives for which De CandoUe (Physiol. Bot.p. 719), 

 in 1832j was averse to that system of nomenclature. I 

 fancied I could do no better than propose the mode recom- 

 mended by Gsertner fil., in his classical work on cross fer- 

 tilization ('Versuche iiber die Bastarderzeugung/ 1849, p. 

 600) . There is frequently less difficulty in ascertaining the 

 female parent; whence it seemed natural to mention it 

 first. The name becomes thus a simple contraction of the 

 common phrase : such a species fertilized by such another. 

 On my arrival in Paris, several botanists, especially French 

 and German, conversant with questions of hybridization, 

 assured me that the contrary usage, that of mentioning 

 the male parent first, had generally prevailed. As, after 

 all, much of this is mere convention, I, and all of us, 

 sided with the method in common use. On my return 

 home, I wished to ascertain whether the authors, who have 

 described a great many hybrid plants, had really followed 

 the custom of placing the name of the male parent first. I was 

 astonished to see that many of them had said nothing about 

 it. Perhaps this may be attributed to their having been 

 oftentimes ignorant of the real parentage of the hybrids, 

 especially among wild plants. Some, perchance, may have 

 supposed that the male parent ought to be the species with 

 which the ofispring had most points of resemblance ; other 

 botanists appear rather to suppose the contrary, and the de 

 gree of similitude is, besides, often questionable. 



This showed the wisdom of another modification of my 

 original text made by the Congress. It requires that the 

 combiuation of the two names shall be only employed when 

 the origin of the hybrid has been experimentally demon- 

 strated ; that is to say, when both parents are known. In 

 all other cases, and these are undoubtedly the most 

 numerous, the name must be analogous to ordinary specific 

 names. This will tend to reduce the number of double names, 

 of which the application is, moreover, inconvenient, and 

 the resemblance too great to certain specific names belong- 

 ing to plants that are not hybrid, such as Lithospermum 



