SOME QUESTIONS OF NOMENCLATURE. 483 



Linnaeus for the animal kingdom was very different from that for the veg- 

 etable kingdom. If the successors of Linnaeus had been content to take 

 genera of like high rank ( equivalent to families, for example), and give 

 other names to the subdivisions (or subgenera) of such genera, which, 

 to use the language of Linnaeus, should be mute, less change would have 

 subsequently resulted. But (Linnaeus himself leading) his successors 

 successively divided a genus, gradually accepting a lower and lower 

 standard of value, till now a genus is little more than a multiform or 

 very distinct isolated species. Yet the change has been very gradual. 

 It began by taking a comprehensive group, recognizing that the differ- 

 ences between its representatives were greater than those existing 

 between certain genera already established, and therefore the old genus 

 was split up; or it was perceived that the characters used to define a 

 genus were of less systematic importance than others found within the 

 limits of the old genus, and, to bring into prominence such a truth, 

 the genus was disintegrated. The process often repeated, and from 

 successively contracted bases, has led to the present condition. 



The existing system of restricted genera, however, is too firmly fixed 

 to revert back to a method that might have been, and which indeed 

 Cuvier attempted to introduce by his revised Linmean genera and their 

 subgenera. The best thing to do now is to accept the current system, 

 purified as much as possible by judicious and inexorably applied laws. 

 Doubtless in the distant future a less cumbrous and changeable system 

 of notation will be devised, but in the meantime we had best put up 

 with the present, inconvenient though it be. 



