BOTANICAL WORK OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 469 



customary to select the earliest published. I agree, however, with the 

 late Sereno Watson (Nature, XLVII, 54), that "there is nothing what- 

 ever of an ethical character inherent in a name, through any priority of 

 publication or position, which should render it morally obligatory upon 

 anyone to accept one name rather than another." And, in point of fact, 

 Linnaeus aud the early systematists attached little importance to pri- 

 ority. The rigid application of the principle involves the assumption 

 that all persons who describe, or attempt to describe, plants are equally 

 competent to the task. But this is so far from being the case that it is 

 sometimes all but impossible even to guess what could possibly have 

 been meant. 1 



In 1872, Sir Joseph Hooker (Flora of British India, I, vii) wrote: 

 "The number of species described by authors who can not determine 

 their affinities increases annually, and I regard the naturalist who puts 

 a described plant into its proper position in regard to its allies as ren- 

 dering a greater service to science than its describer when he either 

 puts it into a wrong place or throws it into any of those chaotic heaps, 

 miscalled genera, with which systematic works still abound." This has 

 always seemed to me not merely sound sense, but a scientific way of 

 treating the matter. What we want in nomenclature is the maximum 

 amount of stability and the minimum amount of change compatible 

 with progress in perfecting our taxonomic system. Nomenclature 

 is a means, not an end. There are, perhaps, 150,000 species of flower- 

 ing plants in existence. What we want to do is to push on the task 

 of getting them named and described in an intelligible manner, and 

 their affinities determined as correctly as possible. We shall then 

 have material for dealing with the larger problems which the vege- 

 tation of our globe will present when treated as a whole. To me the 

 botanists who waste their time over priority are like boys who, when 

 sent on an errand, spend their time in playing by the roadside. By 

 such men even Linnaeus is not to be allowed to decide his own 

 names. To one of the most splendid ornaments of our gardens he 

 gave the name Magnolia grandiflora; this is now to be known as 

 Magnolia fcetida. The reformer himself is constrained to admit ' the 

 change is a most unfortunate one in every way.' (Garden and For- 

 est, II, 615.) It is difficult to see what is gained by making it, except 

 to render systematic botany ridiculous. The genus Aspidium, known 

 to every fern cultivator, was founded by Swartz. It now contains 

 some 400 species, of which the vast majority were, of course, unknown 

 to him at the time; yet the names of all these are to be changed 

 because Adamson founded a genus, Dryopteris, which seems to be 



'Darwin, who always seems to me, almost instinctively, to take the right view 

 in matters relating to natural history, is (Life, Vol. I, p. 364) dead, against the new 

 "practice of naturalists appending for perpetuity the name of the first describer to 

 species." He is equally against the priority craze : " I can not yet bring myself to 

 reject very well-known names" (ibid., p. 369). 



