COMMENTAET. 57 



-^they are termed specific characters. Then we have other 

 characters that are collective, common to several specieSj 

 frequently expressing some real relation between organized 

 beings, when we have to do with natural genera, but also 

 frequently understood in a very different way and in a very 

 variable one by botanists, according to their particular turn 

 of mind, and to the relative importance given to this relation ; 

 these are generic characters. It seems to me that in the 

 name of a species, specific characters stand higher than ge- 

 neric ones, and that it is both just and logical to append as an 

 authority to the specific name (which expresses the first and 

 is not subject to change), the name of the author who first 

 made the plant known, rather than that of the botanist who 

 has understood its generic affinities in such or such a manner. 

 This method relieves the memory and, at the same time, 

 strengthens the immutability of names, while it allows serious 

 botanists to make changes, if they think proper, in the clas- 

 sification of species for the sole benefit of science, without 

 running the risk of beiug confounded with those authors 

 who let themselves be led into interested innovations, in 

 which vanity has a greater share than the love of truth.'' 



After these quotations, which, for impartiality's sake, we 

 have made in extenso, we have to give our own opinion, 

 which has never varied on this question. 



The custom of quoting an author's name immediately after 

 the names of plants has not arisen, as some think, from a 

 desire to do homage or to exercise an act of justice. Of 

 course we must not be unjust in attributing, for instance, to 

 an author a name he has not made, an idea that is not his 

 own ; but the process of quoting authors' names is, above 

 all, an orderly measure. Its end is, 1st, to distinguish two 

 or more genera, two or more species which have perhaps, 

 unfortunately, received in science the same name ; 2ndly, to 

 facilitate the research of an exceedingly important detail : 

 the date of the publication of a name, or of a combination 

 of names, one generic, the other specific. 



Wlien it is wished to do homage to a botanist, a genus 

 may be dedicated to him. If he is to be praised or to be 



