44 LEAFLETS. 



botany are not so abused. I have never heard that any- 

 botanical author, of however light mental equipment for 

 name-making, was audacious enough to propound a new 

 genus Linnaeella, or a Linneantkus , or a Linneopkytum, a 

 Linneocharis , a Pseudolinnaea, a Macrolinnaea, a Microlinaea, 

 a Neolinnea, or any one of a score that might as cheaply be 

 compounded. I think, also, that it would be the sense of 

 botanists in general throughout the world, that this treatment 

 of the name of Linnaeus in botanic nomenclature would be 

 ignominious, and not to be tolerated. It is only third or 

 fourth rate men like Dr. B., Dr. C. and myself, who have 

 each a half-dozen genera, more or less, named so flippantly, 

 and to our dishonor. 



The name Downingia, as dedicated to Andrew Jackson 

 Downing by John Torrey, was a merited honor to a great 

 man. For the later displacement of that name, I am responsi- 

 ble. Bolelia of Rafinesque was found by me to antedate 

 Downingia, and I published the fact. At the moment of 

 doing this I felt a repugnance to the name, and this not so 

 much because of its being anagrammatic. I have no serious 

 objection to certain euphonious anagrammatic names for 

 genera, except when, as in the case of Bolelia, they are con- 

 structed upon personal names ; and this one is plainly a 

 transmutation of the letters of Lobelia. It is in reality dedi- 

 cating a second genus to Lobelius. On that ground I now 

 object to it. That dislike of the name which I felt twenty 

 years since when dealing with it was, at that time, overcome 

 by my sense of the right of priority ; a feeling which, during 

 the vicissitudes of botanical nomenclature within twenty years 

 past has been much weakened. In view of the multitudinous 

 generic names of the most barbarian, or mongrel, or otherwise 

 insufferable character that have been launched forth upon 

 botanical public within these two decades, it is become inevi- 

 table that a check must be put upon the recklessness of those 

 who publish any kind of a villainous generic name, feeling 

 perfectly secure that, no matter what they issue for a name, 

 priority will save it to the end of botanic time. A reaction 



