278 Lg 
VIGOR BOTANICA RORENCORTURE: 
on September 12th, at the opening of the new Botanical Section T 
made the following remarks on the — " hen ta "onencature. 
Woes eee ease 
There is one subject upon which, from my official position ne a 
I desire to take the et sip of sa saying a few words. It is that of 
nomenclature. It is not on its technical side, I am afraid, of sufficient 
general interest to justify my devoting to it the space which its importance 
would otherwise deserve. But I hope to be able to enlist your support 
~ the broad common-sense principles on which our practice should 
ack suppose, everyone knows we owe our present method 
nomenclature in natural history to Linnzeus. He devised the binominal, 
or, as it is often absurdly called, binomial system. "That we must 
have a technical system of nomenclature I suppose no one here will 
majority of plants do not possess vues at all, and the attempts to 
manufacture them in a popular shape have met with but little Success. 
Then, from lack of discriminating er on the t 
them, vernacular names are often ambiguous; thus n" is applied 
equally to Typha ces to Scirpus, plants extremely differe Vernacu- 
only of local utility, while the Tinned system is 
intelligible throughout the world. 
X technical name, then, for a plant or animal is a necessity, as with- 
principles on which such names are based. It is fortunate for us that 
sin are derm by Mill, who, besides being an authority on logic, was 
omplished botanist. He tells us : i “A naturalist, for pur- 
bind, t 
together? He far ther explains that "such names, sire of TT 
those of the gene 
But these are de logical prineiples which are applicable to names 
generally. A name such as Ranunculus repens does not differ in any 
particular from a name such as John Smith, except that one denotes a 
species, the other an individual. 
This being the case, and technical names being a necessity, they con- 
tinually pass into general nse in connection with ‘horticulture, commerce, 
Seip and the It seems obvious that, if science is to keep in 
touch with human affairs stability in nomenclature isa thing not merely 
* Linn, Phil., 210. ; T System of Logic, i. 132. 
