52 IvEAFLETS. 



This he did, giving the Canadian plant the new name of T. 

 corynellum. When eighty years later Gray discovered all this 

 he, in his zeal for priority, suppressed the name T. corynellum 

 which was perfectly valid, as being accompanied by a de- 

 scription, and forced to the front that nomen nudum, T. poly- 

 gamum, Muhl. 



The botanists in general must have inferred this resurrection 

 of the Muhlenbergian adjective to mean that it was an older 

 equivalent — and a sure and certain equivalent — of T corynel- 

 lum. The truth is, it can never be proven the equivalent of 

 anything. All that is said of the plant is that its corolla is 

 white, that it is polygamous, and also glabrous. About the 

 stamens not a word is said over and above what is implied in 

 the term polygamous ; and polygamous is an extremely empty 

 term to try to make any use of in defining a species, for it is 

 a mark by which no individual specimen can be determined. 

 To know a polygamous species to be such, one must have at 

 least three individuals, a male, a female, and an hermaphro- 

 dite. T. polygamum is certainly no better than a nomen 

 nudum. Moreover, it is so far from having been meant for 

 a new designation of lyinnaeus' T. Cornuti that Muhlenberg 

 admits this last as a valid species separate from his T. polyga- 

 mum ; and still further, he attributes to another species flowers 

 as white as those of his T. polygamum,, that is, T. rugosum of 

 Pursh. Then, to make matters if possible still worse for the 

 status of T. polygamum SiS a tenable name of any white-flowered 

 Thalictrum, Sprengel, the first to print Muhlenberg's T. poly- 

 gamum name with an accompanying description, says of its 

 filaments that they are filiform. A German, and a contem- 

 porary, and presumably a correspondent of the German 

 Muhlenberg, must have had the means of knowing what the 

 latter had had in mind under that nomen nudum which he had 

 caused to be printed. So then, the very first paragraph or even 

 line of description of T. polygamum ever printed (Sprengel, 

 Syst. II 671) must lead the careful investigator, if to any con- 

 clusion at all, to that of Sereno Watson and some others, that 

 what Muhlenberg had was nearer T. purpurascens , and probably 



