4 
12 METASPERMAE OF THE MINNESOTA VALLEY. 
The cause of the present upheaval in plant nomenclature, 
signalised, but not at all initiated, by such a book as 
that of Kuntze (6), is very easy to discover. Never so 
much as to-day has botany become world-wide. The multipli- 
city of periodicals, the facilities for exchange and correspond- 
ence between different countries, expeditions, congresses, com- 
munications, the development of new centers of activity in all 
parts of the globe, all conspire to make insularity of nomen- 
clature impracticable, except for those who do not care to be 
within the pale of the modern conditions. It was a matter of 
less importance fifty years ago, if the name Potamogeton pauci- 
florus was given to one plant in France, by Lamarck, and to 
quite a different plant in America, by Pursh. There was less 
danger of confusion, for French botanists and American bot- 
anists were not then so distinctly interested in each other’s 
field. The international character of science was recognised 
long ago in the adoption of an international language—Latin 
—in which oriental and occidental investigators can commu- 
nicate, whatever their native dialect. The law of priority 
simply carries this recognition farther, and provides that in 
the department of nomenclature Latin shall be used in the 
same sense in all countries. 
In America the rightful implication of the law of priority 
has been ably expounded by Britton (7) and Greene (8), 
seconded by many others. Under their leadership most of 
the younger school of botanists have determined to enlist, but 
the older men whose life-works have been largely accomplished 
under the older and insular interpretation, the provincial dis- 
pensation, aS it may be named, have in most cases failed to 
withdraw from the position of their youth—the ‘‘ position of 
naming-plants-as-one-pleases ’—and their publications are in 
consequence marred by the illegal nomenclature. Manuals 
and hanudy-reference-floras, most local lists and many mono- 
graphs have perpetuated the faulty and insular methods and it 
is but very recently that a concerted attempt is being made to 
establish this department of botanical work upon the only sure 
foundation possible without a complete withdrawal from the 
existant system. 
The present list, therefore, contains many unfamiliar names, 
but with these are cited, so far as possible, other post-Linnean 
(6) Kuntze: Revisio Generum Plantarum (1891). 
(7) Britton: Papers in Bull. Torrey Bot. Club and Ann. of N. Y, Acad; Contr. 
Columbia College Herb,(1885 ys 
(8) Greene: Pittonia, Flora Franciscana, ete. (1885 
Ve 
