1892.] Recent Literature. lol 



Section 2 is entitled " Certain common causes of the many mistakes 

 in Durand's Index and on the future prevention of such mistakes." 

 The first cause is inconsistent treatment of authors. Some are entirely 

 neglected unless they were the emendators of a genus, while other 

 " beliebte Autoren," though pre-Linnsean, are cited even to emended 

 genera. Another cause, he points out, is inconsistency and confusion 

 in the use of the abbreviations " MS.," "hied." etc. He distinguishes 

 "such names found or given in MS. as are adopted and published by 

 another author" from "names found in MS. which another author 

 rejects, but which are published as synonyms." These he says are 

 badly confused in practice, and he distinguishes the latter as "uomina 

 inapplicata (n. inapl) " and the former as " nomina adoptata (n. adopt.)" 

 He also points out the confusion resulting from irregular use of non 

 for p. p. emend., etc. and shows the cases to which it should be restricted. 

 It will be seen that he is very strict as to the smallest details. It often 

 seems as if the distinctions he draws were too small to notice until his 

 formidable lists of the results of looseness are examined. He cites 

 copiously and apparently exhaustively on every point and argues with 



In section 3 he considers Pfeiffer's " Nomenclator Botanicus" at 

 some length, criticising some parts of it a little. Incidentally he says 

 that neither Pfeiffer nor Durand took enough time for their work, and 

 that as a result the former is " leaky," and the latter sor gloss fehlervo 11." 



Sections 4-12 deal with the "principal causes of the present condi- 

 tion of nomenclature." Section 4 is entitled "Linne's competition with 

 his contemporaries." Linn6, it seems, in reforming nomenclature^ 

 besides changing many bad names, " wilfully altered many good earlier 

 genus names" and after 1737 was very free in altering the names 

 given by those of his contemporaries who ventured to criticise him or 

 who did not adopt his nomenclature. Says Kuntze : " Linne was 

 great as an investigator, a discriminating observer, an ingenious 

 thinker with immense talent for ' Systematics,' a tireless worker, an 

 attached pupil, a genial man and on the whole an honorable character ; 

 but excessively greedy of honor. Easily accessible to flattery, very 

 prone to neglect of acknowledgment, tolerating no opposition, feeling 

 himself an autocrat; he often needlessly changed names (even 

 those which he himself had previously adopted) and chastised his 

 opponents and « nichtbeivunderer ' by neglect of the names adopted or 

 given by them. He actually held it allowable to criticise the newly 

 created genera of his contemporaries, if he adopted them or to apply 

 11 



