GREY PHALAROPE. 97 
president of the Linneean Society, “is, from the multitude of 
objects with which it is conversant, necessarily so encumbered 
with names, that students require every possible assistance to 
facilitate the attainment of those names, and have a just right 
to complain of every needless impediment. Nor is it allow- 
able to alter such names, even for the better. In our science, 
the names established throughout the works of Linnzeus are 
become current coin, nor can they be altered without great 
inconvenience,” * 
That there is a property in names as well as in things will 
not be disputed ; and there are few naturalists who would not 
feel as sensibly a fraud committed on their nomenclature as on 
their purse. The ardour with which the student pursues his 
researches, and the solicitude which he manifests in promul- 
gating his discoveries under appropriate appellations, are proofs 
that at least part of his gratification is derived from the sup- 
posed distinction which a name will confer upon him ; deprive 
him of this distinction, and you inflict a wound upon his 
self-love which will not readily be healed. 
To enter into a train of reasoning to prove that he who 
first describes and names a subject of natural history agreeable 
to the laws of systematic classification is for ever entitled to 
his name, and that it cannot be superseded without injustice, 
would be useless, because they are propositions which all 
naturalists deem self-evident. Then how comes it, whilst we 
are so tenacious of our own rights, we so often disregard those 
of others ? 
I would now come to the point. It will be perceived that 
I have ventured to restore the long-neglected name of /uli- 
earia. That I shall be supported in this restoration I have 
little doubt, when it shall have been made manifest that it was 
Linneeus himself who first named this species, A reference 
to the tenth edition of the “Systema Naturae” + will show that 
* An Introduction to Physiological and Systematical Botany, chap. 12. 
+ Of all the editions of the “Systema Nature,” the tenth and the twelfth 
are the most valuable ; the former being the first which contains the 
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