1892.] Botany. 859 
conservative position, the unthinking and unbotanical are always dis- 
tinctly satisfied and are accustomed to declare that botanical nomen- 
clature is purely a “ practical matter” and should be taken out of the 
hands of the botanists altogether and turned over to some unprofes- 
sional commission for settlement. Objections of this sort are natural, 
for the changing of names in our accustomed department of science is 
always a confusing matter. Such criticism is, however, unthinking 
and unbotanical because it fails to recognize that the whole difficulty 
has originated on account of just such conditions as are extolled and 
recommended for perpetuation. The only way to obtain a stable 
nomenclature is by rigidly enforcing the law of priority with reference 
to specific names. All instability finds its well spring in the disregard 
of this law, and stability under our present general system of nomen- 
clature can only be obtained by strict adherence to the oldest available 
specific name, by whomever or wherever it may have been published. 
The cause of the present upheaval in plant nomenclature, signalized 
but not at all initiated, by such a book as that of Kuntze, is very easy 
to discover. Never so much as to-day has botany become world-wide. 
The multiplicity of periodicals, the facilities for exchange and corre- 
spondence between different countries, expeditions, congresses, com- 
munications, the development of new centers of activity in all parts of 
the globe, all conspire to make insularity of nomenclature impractica- 
“ble, except for those who do not care to be within the pale of modern 
conditions. It was a matter of less importance fifty years ago, if the 
name Potamogeton pauciflorus was given to one plant in France, by 
Lamarck, and to quite a different plant in America, by Pursh. There 
was less danger of confusion, for French botanists and American bot- 
anists were not then so distinctly interested in each other’s field. The 
international character of science was recognized long ago in the 
adoption of an international language—Latin—in which oriental and 
occidental investigators can communicate, whatever their native 
dialect. The law of priority simply carries this recognition farther, 
and provides that in the department of nomenclature Latin shall be 
used in the same sense in all countries. 
In America the rightful implication of the law of priority has been 
ably expounded by Britton and Greene, seconded by many others. 
Under their leadership most of the younger school of botanists have 
‘determined to enlist, but the older men whose life works have been 
largely accomplished under the older and insular interpretation, the 
provincial dispensation, as it may be named, have in most cases fa 
to withdraw from the position of their youth—the “ position of nam- 
