230 The American Naturalist. [March, 



His eleventh paragraph is: "In case of halves of separable ancient 

 genus-names, if the first word is valid and capable of standing alone, 

 and is not the name of a higher group, then the first word stands. 

 Accordingly he gives us " Bursa " for Capsella, and our common weed 

 he writes " Bursa pastoris Wigg." 



To article 06 he adds : "Names which rest upon unlike orthogra- 

 phy or are only to I»'<1 - -• nee or addition of final 

 syllables, only stand a- different word- when they differ in one unlike 

 consonant standing between two vowels or lacking in one of the 

 words." He then proposes an addition to the effect that vernacular 

 names and the younger of two pseudo-homouymes (e. g. Apium L and 

 Apios Moench., within his rule) be adopted and Latin i/.ed or altered, as 

 the ease may be, by the addition of two or three letters; e. g. Vochy 

 Aubl. he makes "Vochysia Aubl. corr. O.K.;" Apios, " Apiosus 

 Haller corr. O. K." He lays down some more exceptions and addi- 

 tions, which are quite strictly formulated, and finally proposes this: 

 " Permissible name corrections do not warrant the citation of the cor- 

 recting author in the first place, either for genera or for the names of 

 species to be joined therewith." He also lays it down thai names like 

 Heurckia and Vanheurckia, Candollea and Decandollea must stand as 

 distinct. I believe I am justified in savin-, however, that Saecardia 

 (or as he writes it Saccardoa) and Pasaccardoa or Marckia and 

 Lamarckia (both of which stand under his rule) are much more likely 

 to be confused in practice than Apios and Apium, certainly more M 

 than Capnodes and Capnodium, which conflict under his rule, so that 

 he rejects the latter. Besides his " corrections " (as Apiosus) are fatal 

 to the meaning of a name, and as a rule add nothing to its sound. It 

 is all very well to have strict rules here as elsewhere, but there is 

 room in this place for the application of a little common sense. 



A suggestion which he makes for a new article is interesting, and 

 will not seem unreasonable to those who have tried to deal with works 

 in Polish or Hungarian which sometimes appear. It is: " Article 69. 

 Publications are only admissible for competition for valid nomencla- 

 ture so long and so far as they are printed in Latin characters and 

 appear in the Latin, English, French or ( ierman languages; but for 

 gothic characters this has no retrospective force." To be strictly just 

 this should include Italian ; hi other respects the rule is desirable. 



Section 15, additions, etc., to i'rit/el's Tin-aunts and £ 16, a vigor- 

 ous and well written article in Kn-li.di on " Modern KnglUh Nomen- 

 clature " close the introduction. 



