INTRODUCTION. 15 
generic authors back to Tournefort, others are inclined to go 
back to Dioscorides or Pliny (19) with their references. There 
“is ample room for argument in this department of the subject, 
but apparently no room for dogmatism. It will be generally 
acknowledged that any starting point is, of necessity, arbitrary, 
and it becomes a matter of preference, to be determined as far 
as possible in the light of convenience and custom whether one 
base-line or another be adopted. 
The common notion of lay-botanists that Linnaeus was the 
founder of genera or the inventor of the binomial system of 
nomenclature, is of course, readily corrected by the facts of 
history. Nevertheless, Linnaeus is generally admitted to have 
been the first to reduce nomenclature, specific and generic, to 
an orderly condition. His work is therefore, for convenience, 
adopted as a meridian and in these pages specific citations do 
not go back of the Ist ed. of the Species Plantarum (20), nor 
generic citations (except in the case of some synonyms) back 
of the 1st ed. of the Genera Plantarum (21). I am unable to 
see any gain in citing from the Systema of 1785. 
Citation of genera and families. It seems clear for apparent 
reasons that priority should govern in generic names, for in the 
present condition of botanical science the conception of a genus 
is relatively stable. This is true whether one adopts a wide or 
narrow notion of a given genus. Family and ordinal names, 
are, however, not yet likely to be stable, for they are based 
upon a more fluctuating foundation. It is probable that the 
time is not yet ripe for a definite and sharp determination of 
family or ordinal characters. While, then, priority may rightly 
govern in generic citation, there is no reason to insist upon it 
in family, ordinal or class citations. But if this should be 
gainsaid, the position may at least be maintained that the mer- 
idian here adopted should be the Genera of Endlicher (22). It 
would appear that any purely intellectual concept like a family 
of plants, which certainly has no objective existence, but is 
merely a category in which we are accustomed to group cer- 
tain quite distinct individual organisms on the basis of sup- 
posed relationship, abstracted from observed and hypothesised 
resemblances, should be elastic in name as it is elastic in sig- 
nificance. The evident objection is that this is true also of 
genera and species, which are, in like fashion, subjective cate- 
(19). S. F, Gray: Arr. Brit. Pl. (1821). 
(20). Linnaeus: Species Plantarum, ed. I. (1753). 
(21). Linnaeus: Genera Plantarum, ed. I. (1737). 
(22). Endlicher; Genera Plantarum (1836-40). 
