. 
A. Gray—Botanical Nomenclature. 423 
only to understand that genera adopted by Linneus from Tour- 
nefort, etc., and so accredited, should continue to be thus cited ; 
that the date 1737 (Linn. Genera, ed. 1), is, indeed, the point of 
departure from which to reckon priority, yet that botanical 
genera began with Tournefort; so that Tourmefortian genera 
which are accepted date from the year 1700. That is the limit 
fixed by Linnzeus, and it definitely excludes the herbalists and 
the ancients, whose writings may be consulted for historical 
elucidation, but not as authority for names. 
Upon articles 21 and 22, which give rules for the names of 
orders and other supra-generic groups, our author offers no 
new remarks. We venture to offer two. It*being the general 
rule that acee is the proper termination for ordinal names 
which take their appellation from a typical genus, it is desir- 
Re 
nearly unpronounceable words of four or five consecutive 
vowels, or, when the diphthongs are printed in separate letters, 
e. Of these— 
according to a prevalent fashion, one or two more. 
the dipththongs written out—Sawraujeae, Spiraeeae, Catesbaeeae, 
Jaumeeae, Thymeleeae, and Moraeeae are the worst instances, 
and would justify any infraction of rules.+ The last and one 
of the worst would have been avoided by writing the ordinal 
name Jridacee, when that of the tribe would have been Jridec. 
Names are to be spoken as well as read, and botanists who 
* Crucifere, Leguminose, Umbellifere, Composite, Labiate, and the like, are 
LO exception to the rule, rightly stated, as they are not named from typical 
genera. We shall not have any more of them, but the old ones in use are among 
_ + Far better to write Spireacew, with DeCandolle. The use of this termina- 
tion for tribal names need not be objected to by those who take little pains to use 
It for orders. And those of us who are careful so to employ it, would prefer i 
occasional use for tribes and suborders to the concatenation of vowels, which it 
18 not easy to write and almost impossible to pronounce. Some quite unnecessary 
tribal names in acew, suc ernoniacee and Hupatoriacee, adopted by De- 
Candolle from Lessing, are kept up, although exceptional. 
* 
