40 LEAFLETS. 



No names seem to originate arbitrarily, and most names, even 

 outside of zoology and botany as well, originally are framed 

 to designate some mark or characteristic of the thing named ; 

 and so, I can not help seeing that the name morella points not 

 to bayberries but to mulberries. By the name alone I am led 

 to wonder whether in Cochinchina Loureiro can have found 

 bushes or trees, allied to bayberry or wax myrtle, whose fertile 

 aments develop, not into hard wax-covered nuts, but into 

 pulpy drupelets. I consult the book and find even better 

 reasons than I had guessed for Loureiro's having named his 

 new shrub Morella; for he says its mature female aments are 

 not only pulpy, red and appearing like mulberries, but are 

 edible. He relates that the Chinese cultivate the tree ; that 

 in Cochin China it grows wild, with smaller fruits ; that these 

 are both palatable and wholesome ; that the Chinese eat them 

 raw ; that Europeans in China preserve them with sugar ; that 

 the Cochinchinese cook them while immature, and that when 

 ripe they make from them a wine which is not to be despised 

 whether as to color, odor or flavor (Fl. Cochinch. p. 548). 



It is always extremely venturesome to select out of the 

 Kew Index any generic name that may have been demoted to 

 synonymy by Bentham, without first carefully examining the 

 original text of the publication of such genus. From the text 

 of the author of Morella it becomes clear as day that no shrub 

 or tree known in any part of America can be referred to that 

 genus with the faintest semblance of reason. 



What, then, are we to call our bayberries as a genus I,atin- 

 named ? The false Myrica of L,innaeus must have for its type 

 the genus Gale of Tournefort. My friend Mr. Small I seem 

 to see must regard our bayberries as generically separate from 

 Gale. I should most readily agree to that. But what is Mr. 

 Small to call the Atlantic, and I the Pacific, bayberries? I 

 recommend to my friend, and to myself, a further study of 

 that column of Kew Index Myrica synonyms ; also that we 

 neither one pick up the name that seems next older in history, 

 and run with it into print without knowing at all what such 

 name does really stand for. 



