230 LEAFLETS. 



it stands would have been less flagrant had the specific name 

 appeared as Mitellastra caulescentes, for so, the substantive and 

 participial terms of it would have been at that agreement which 

 the law of the language so inflexibly demands ; though the very 

 idea which I thus put forward presupposes recognition of Mitel- 

 lastra as the plural that it is, which quality the author neither 

 saw for himself nor was taught to see. 



What I have now said is conclusive and might suffice ; but I 

 " am learning to forestall frail subterfuges. Here no shelter can 

 be taken under the name of Asa Gray. He made the name 

 Mitellastra. If I say that he made it for the name of a genus, 

 or that there is the least probability that he thought of it as a 

 future generic name, I state an untruth, and am become a great 

 and good man's calumniator. He framed Mitellastra as a sec- 

 tional name, and in the plural, as is correct. Mr. Rydberg, on 

 page 98 of the said Flora, has propounded ten sectional names 

 under Heuchera, all of them in the plural, as they should be ; 

 but if some botanist of the future, taking those his ten sections 

 for genera, and the ten sectional names for generic names, shall 

 proceed to write for species Bracteatae bracteata, Pilosissimae 

 pilosissima, Rubescentes rubescens, and so to the end of the 

 seventy, he will be following to the letter Mr. Eydberg in the 

 case of Mitellastra caulescens ; for, grammatically, the whole 

 seventy-one will be exactly parallel. 



That Rubacer means red maple, the author of that name him- 

 self placed beyond dispute when he printed that combination 

 Rubacer odoratum. The ending um is absolutely fatal to the 

 witless claim thai any Rubacer is a Rubus and not an Acer. 

 When on page 211 of this volume I presented that argument I 

 called attention to its character as unanswerable. In a recent 

 display of loosely scattering polemics ' the author of the syn- 

 onym Rubacer leaves unrecalled this particular point I made. 

 There may be readers who may charge this to the supposed dis. 



'Torreya, vi, 165-169. 



