102 I,EAFI<ETS. 



the name Chamelaeagnus (Pempt. 768). Still earlier the type 

 had been known by the two-worded generic name, Myrtus 

 Brabantica. Gerarde (1597), though using English in his 

 text, gives all the L,atin names that have ever been proposed, 

 and also three English generic names, one of which is Gaule. 

 Mr. Tidestrom seems to have found J. Bauhin (1650) the first 

 I^atin writer to employ Gale as a lyatin generic name. 

 John Ray, in his I,atin Historia Plantanum (1688), while 

 citing at the head of his chapter Bauhin's Gale, yet himself 

 prefers Dodonasus' Chamelaeagnus, as appears from his con- 

 cluding sentence. The Danish herbalist, Simon Pauli, had 

 expressed the belief that this shrub of Europe, the leaves of 

 which were used in Denmark for a tea, is the same as Thea 

 of the Chinese ; to which Ray objects somewhat impatiently : 



Thea is a shrub as far from being related to Chamelaeagnus as 

 China is distant from Europe." Nevertheless Ray, in his 

 Synopsis (1696) accepts Gale as the Latin name of the type. 

 Tournefort (1706), Petiver (1717), Dillenius (1719), Vaillant 

 (1727) and others of the period maintain it without question- 

 ing its fitness to serve in that capacity ; and after its attempted 

 suppression by lyinnaeus (1737), it was restored by Du Hamel 

 (1755) and by Adanson (1763). Even as late as 1902 it 

 figures as the generic name of the type in a monograph by 

 Chevalier, cited in the Elysium. Marianum.. 



So then, during some 250 years there appears quite a splen- 

 did succession of botanical authors who found no fault with 

 Gale as a Eatin generic name ; and there may be ground for 

 questioning that this name is in the same category with such 

 other vernacular names as Gansblum (Gooseblossom), Hond- 

 bessen (Dogberry) and one or two others that were seriously 

 proposed by Adanson. Neither Hondbessen nor Gansblum has 

 been adopted by any one hitherto, in as far as I am aware ; 

 and the reason for neglecting them is plainly this, that being 

 such as a Teutonic peasantry has assigned them in the terms 

 of their own vernacular, they are unfit to serve as generic names 

 in Eatin botany. To show the ridiculousness of approving 

 such names we have but to suppose the name Erophila verna 



