302 LEAPLBTS. 



generic names — this name-making method, I say, had already 

 disfigured nomenclature beyond further endurance on the part 

 of the educated. 



Then there was a second easy mode of constructing generic 

 names ad libitum; that of taking two distinct names of old 

 genera and writing them together as one, to form the title of a 

 new genus different from both. Such were Cyiisogenisia, Lilio- 

 narcissus, Narcissoleucojum, and a dozen more of that ilk, all of 

 which held their places in all the books, until Linnaeus called 

 for their banishment despite their indisputable priority, and they 

 were banished. I long since came to regard this expurgation of 

 the list of generic names — one made, I repeat, despite priority — 

 as his greatest benefaction to botany. 



But there was one possible way of abusing the name-maker's 

 privilege which Linnaeus did not legislate against, and that for 

 the reason that there was then upon record no instance of it ; 

 nor could he have dreamed that such an abuse would ever have 

 an example, so utterly irrational and absurd every thoughtful 

 mind must regard it, at least until some one supposed to be sane 

 and competent has led the way; for there is no kind of absurdity 

 which some one will not approve and practice if but some sup- 

 posed authority has given the first example of it. I refer to the 

 newly introduced usage of naming two or three different genera 

 of plants in honor — dishonor, it should be said — of one and the 

 same man, and doing it deliberately. Against this usage no 

 legislation or admonition was ever yet directed that I know of. 

 Law against it was never enacted or suggested, and for the 

 simple reason that no one would be expected to violate such a 

 principle. From the time — now twenty -five centuries past — when 

 Eupaiorium and Gentiana were dedicated to royal botanists, 

 down through all the later centuries of genus-naming, from Con- 

 rad Gesner, Matthiolus and Caesalpinus, of the sixteenth century, 

 to the middle of the nineteenth, I believe that every instance of a 

 botanist's having a second genus named in his honor was acci- 

 dental; the two names — sometimes three or four, and even five — 

 were each made without knowledge of the existence of another ; 

 and when the facts became known, and the later name must needs 

 pass into synonymy, the new and substitute name was not al- 



