THEIR NOMENCLATURE. 447 
Species 1. H. tetrapterum, alias quadrangulum. 
Species 2. H. quadrangulum, alias dubium. 
Thenceforth, when recorders of localities used the familiar name 
of quadrangulum, the question would necessarily arise, ‘ Which of 
the two species they intended by that name?’ The first or the 
second? This quadrangulum or That quadrangulum ? 
By good chance, that unlucky blunder never got into the much- 
used ‘Manual’; it blemished only some local Floras and other 
works of less botanical importance. But one of the two plants 
under notice nevertheless seemed destined to keep up error and 
confusion among us, sown broadcast through the ‘ Manual’ itself. 
There appeared a sort of unwillingness to let it get back its true 
name of dubium fully and honestly. In the first edition of the 
‘Manual’ that poor victim was split unequally into two supposed 
species respectively named maculatum and dubiwm. And with a 
curious taste for confusing innovation, the old name was specially 
restricted to a “‘ rare” plant, a very local and lesser half, while the 
new name maculatum was freely bestowed upon the better half, 
the comparatively common plant, which all preceding botanists 
had known as dubium. This perverse crotchet was carried into 
the second edition also. More wisely, in the third edition, the 
legitimate name dubiwm was restored in full to the species; that 
of maculatum being now in its turn restricted to a trifling variety 
of it. 
The recent discovery of Hypericum beticum in Cornwall and 
Devon, by Mr. Archer Briggs, has completed the trio of quadran- 
gular species, as treated in this volume at pages 129—380. 
Professor Babington takes up the older name undulatum, instead 
of the more recent beticum, for the plant of the peninsular 
province; and perhaps he is technically correct in doing so. 
Reichenbach's figure of undulatun may possibly have been 
intended for our species, although (if so) it is made an un-likeness 
of the plant through the exaggerated waving of the margins of the 
leaves and other defects. Equally exaggerated in another way, 
is the better figure in the ‘Journal of Botany,’ where the artist 
has represented our plant with the large flowers of dubium or 
