446 III. SEGREGATES AND 
instructive example, although one of a different kind from the 
three preceding aggregates. Its three segregates, treated apart on 
pages 129—30 of this volume, are now generally recognized and 
well understood ; although an exclusive use of some descriptive 
works and editions might still much mislead a student. Begin- 
ning this time with the ‘Flora Anglica,’ we find Hudson's curt 
Linnean character for his one species “floribus trigynis, caule 
quadrato herbaceo” applicable to any of its three segregates now 
recognized as so many good species. 
In ‘ Flora Britannica’ the dubium appears as a distinct species, 
disconnected in print from quadrangulum by the interposition of 
perforatum between them. Smith there shews that he sufficiently 
understood these plants, by his contrasted characters of “ foliolis 
calycinis lanceolatis ” for the quadrangulum, and of “ foliolis caly- 
cinis ellipticis” for the dubiuwm. Hooker's ‘ British Flora’ and 
other descriptive works kept up the same easily distinguished 
species ; and thus there seemed scarcely a chance left for any 
English botanist to throw them into confusion. And yet, through 
the help of foreign importations, the chance has been found and 
acted upon twice over ! 
The Authors of the ‘ Flora of Shropshire’ and ‘ Primitie Flore 
Sarnice,’ with the good intention of correcting the imputed errors 
of everybody else, did contrive to confuse our otherwise clear 
nomenclature, by their efforts to rectify it. They transferred the 
name quadrangulum to Hypericum dubium, discarding this latter 
specific name. They compensated our familiar species, the true 
Hypericum quadrangulum, by giving to it the name of tetrapterum 
instead of its own. ‘This was an imitation of the Friesian model; 
being about equivalent to a declaration, that a misnomer by Fries 
was more reliable than a correct name used by all English 
botanists, themselves only excepted. 
The two species thus each became blessed with two specific 
names. And as if to convert that simple inconvenience into 
a compound confusion, in each instance one of its two names now 
meant the other species also. The nomenclature was rectified into 
this highly unsatisfactory position :— 
