186 General Notes. [ March, 
There is another point in which I do not agree with the estab- 
lished rules: that is the right of priority, which the author of the 
ungrammatical names. This right of priority is the real source 
of premature publications and of the accumulation of synonyms. 
For example: Bertoloni, a respectable Italian botanist, professor 
in Bologna, receives a number of Alabama plants; he describes 
and names many new species which are known and named before. 
The trouble is, he is not enough acquainted with the North 
American flora and. too hasty to leave the publication of new 
American species to an American author, who has at his disposi- 
tion a greater quantity of specimens, which are necessary for a 
correct description. Now amongst those Puan was perhaps a 
single poor specimen of Petalostamon corymbosum. Instead of 
laying it aside he describes it as the type of a new genus (Gave- 
sia) in the order of Compositæ. How often in the same way we 
see a man who is not master of the synopsis, who does not know 
what is known, push his name before the 7 public, not 
.from zeal for istics, but from desire to see “mihi” behind a 
new created species. Then true scientists pat the trouble to 
clear the stable. 
To meet the case at once there should be appointed an inter- 
national committee, an Areopagus, in which the most prominent 
botanists should decide on the value of each specific name. Free 
competition would be left open, but the author of a name would 
have the risk of refusal. Better yet—we, the humble mortar 
carriers, should give over to the masters of systems all the peb- 
' bles and diamonds we find, and leave to them the task of assort- 
ing. The arena of science is wide, and there is chance enough to 
search for laurels outside of systematic botany. 
And now one word about wrongly spelled or ungrammatical 
names. The Parisian congress has acknowledged the right to 
correct such bad names, and that is right. The best scholar may 
inadvertently make a mistake, and he will not be offended by 
eing corrected. It is right to read Astragalus aboriginum 
instead of aborigenorum, and Scytonema simplex instead of sim- 
plice—fred. Brendel. 
Aspipium BOOTTII Tuckerman.—As the following note, pre- 
pared for my Catalogue of the “ Davenport Herbarium’ ’ of North 
American Ferns, is supplementa to my paper on “Aspidium 
spinulosum Swz., and its varieties,” published in the NATURALIST for 
November, 1878, I offer it here in advance of publication. 
In my paper on “Aspidium spinulosnm Swz., and its varieties ” 
(Amer. Nar. l. c.) I was led to consider A. ġoottii Tuck- 
erman and A. remotum Braun as identical, by an examination o 
a specimen of the latter, at Cambridge, from Braun’s herbarium, 
and to credit Braun’s name with being the oldest, on the authority 
of remarks in Hooker’s “ British Ferns,” t, 22, but since the pub- 
