> 
248 Scientific Intelligence. 
2. naturalness ; 3. preponderant actual usage. We had maintained 
in this Journal (for March and for May, 1877) and in vos 
Botany (6th ed., note on pp. 51, 52) that the externe visum v 
has decidedly the best case on the second ground, and aint in 
botany on the third also. And now that DeCandolle has drawn 
our attention to the m atter, we are going to claim the remaining 
ground likewise, and to ¢ ontend that the contrary usage in botany 
came in from non-attention to the teaching and practice of Linnzus 
himself! 
On p. 39 of Linneus’s only own edition of the Philosophia 
Botanica he defines and illustrates the directions of twining thus: 
“Sinistrorsum, secundum solem vulgo: Humulus, Helxine, Loni- 
cera, m, cont otum solis vulgi; Convolvulus, 
lla, Phaseolus, Cynanche, Huphorbia, Eupatorin 
othing is said about the position of the observer. But in 
every one of the examples of sinistrorse (//elzine being Polygonum 
eres the stem winds around the support passing from 
right to left of the observer confronting the coil; and in every 
atok é : : : 
repeated, except that reference to the sun’s apparent course is 
omitted and additional examples are a Jee (but wt all) of 
them accordant with the preceding. woul m that 
Ss ds 
Wichura was not mistaken in his sulecbuiaik ‘hae DeCandolle had 
followed a different method from that of Linneus. this 
appears ae be the whole case as respects direction moe twining. 
But on the same page, to “ Corolla non erg is appended 
the deokause which has made so much trouble, viz: ‘ Sinistrorsum 
hoe est, quod respicit sinistrum, si ponas Te sus sum in centro 
; rors 
That is to say, in defining the direction of overlapping of the 
parts of a perianth, Linnzeus took the open flower instead of t 
a and proposed to look down upon it from above or ish 
w it may well be that Linneus subsequently perceived the 
soinesithidis between his terminology for overlapping and that 
for eiyfonack ; and that his brief erratum, on p. 310, “ pro sinistrum 
ege dextram,” was intended to bring the former into congruity 
with the latter which it does, but t in an owkwar d way. Perhaps 
many of them accord with the outside as with the inside point of 
view. Hepa ay, the erratum . his own; it seems unlikely that 
he authorized its omission from the Vienna editions; and Gledistch 
and Willdenow should not be blamed for heeding his behest in 
their editions. For, so far as it goes, it tends to render their 
author consistent with hinwibie If Linnaeus had revised the page 
himself, he would have left out the “ meridiem adspicere,” which 
has notl ing to do with the matter, and doubtless he would have 
completed his assimilation of the direction of petal-obliquity or 
overlapping with that of stem-winding; and so the whole confu- 
