COMMENTARY. 65 



The consequences of the Article are not^ however, so great 

 as might' be thought, many travellers or collectors publishing 

 their names when they distribute their plants (Art. 42). 

 Spruce, Kotschy, Wallich, and a number of others, have 

 published their names by means of labels or catalogues, which 

 are to be cited. Others have put no names, or have not distri- 

 buted their plants ; ia those cases, the only names to be cited 

 are those of the authors who have published them. It is 

 proper, for instance, to cite Spruce for a species named and 

 published by him, and then described by Bentham, and to 

 quote Bentham for one of Hartweg^s plants, distributed by 

 him without a name, but afterwards named by Bentham. 

 To act otherwise would be incorrect, and, as regards ancient 

 travellers, it would not be equitable. Commerson, for in- 

 stance, has left names of plants iu herbaria, without publish- 

 ing them. Those who publish them now cannot conscien- 

 tiously attribute them to Commerson; for, botany having 

 undergone many changes since the time of that zealous col- 

 lector, he would not, in the present day, give his plants the 

 names he gave them formerly ; and who knows whether he 

 himself had not already discovered that some of his names 

 were erroneous ? 



61. A rather common error, but not the less to be re- 

 gretted, is to quote, as the author of a sectional name, the 

 botanist who applied that same name to a genus, or vice 

 versd; or, agaiu, to quote as the author of a species him 

 who had named the variety that is raised to that rank. 

 Through this negligence the opinion of the original author 

 is -wrongly represented, and the reader is deceived as to the 

 date of the section or of the genus, or of the collective names 

 of the species or varieties. 



52. The rule laid down was followed by Liunseus, Jussieu, 

 De Candolle, Bndlicher, Steudel, and all other botanists till 

 of late years. Many botanists have now, for some time, got 

 into the habit of abridging by the suppression of vowels, 

 even in the first syllable, the result being — 1st, that many 

 of these abbreviations are unintelligible ; 2ndly, that if it be 

 required to search for the name in an alphabetical list of 



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