56 The American Naturalist. [January, 



priority, and their proposals have never conformed to the Paris code. 

 One must ask involuntarily what laws Messrs. Ascherson and Engler 

 do recognize in nomenclature at all. With the best intentions, I can- 

 not perceive any trace of a ' Rechtshoden.' " 



" The Paris code " he continues, " is in my opinion better than the 

 proposals and deviating principles which Engler. Ascherson and Pfit- 

 zer suggest and which they themselves follow only in part. Supposing 

 one followed out the deviating principles honestly and consistently, 

 many more name alterations and complications would result than 

 through following the Paris code." 



Since Ascherson and Engler have been at some pains to expose what 

 they deem fundamental errors, one may well ^suggest a fundamental 

 error upon which they proceed. Their whole argument is based upon 

 the notion that there is a current nomenclature. It is this very notion, 

 indeed, which creates a large part of the opposition to all systematic 

 attempts to bring order into nomenclature. When a systematic goes 

 goes about the work of adjusting the nomenclature of his particular 

 group, current nomenclature does not trouble him at all. There he 

 sets about him with vigor, and even, perhaps, in accordance with rule and 

 principle. But as he looks about him beyond the range of his own 

 group, he feels that it would be very convenient if names could stand 

 as they are in the nearest book at hand, and he becomes conscious of 

 something which he calls current nomenclature. It may be safely 

 affirmed that if Dr. Kuntze had taken up a small group and worked 

 out its nomenclature with the care and thoroughness he bestowed upon 

 all the Phanerogams, no one would have made more than a passing 

 objection, and before long his names would have found themselves cur- 

 rent. Who ever said anything about the radical changes made in the 

 nomenclature of the Uredinece when Winter and afterwards Schroeter 

 replaced name after name by the old specific names of JEeidium and 

 Uredo forms ? Very little that Dr. Kuntze has done is more radical 

 than that — and their changes are as current as anything can be said to 

 be at the present day. Before we set about preserving a current 

 nomenclature, we must produce one, and that can only be done by ad- 

 hering consistently to rules. 



As to the propositions made by Escherson and Engler, not much 

 need be said. The 5th and 6th are avowedly only another form of the 

 discredited 4th Berlin thesis. The whole object of the authors seems to 

 be to save their list of eighty-one names— if not by one means then by 

 another. They are as radical as the best of us as far as specific nomen- 

 clature is concerned, and one might well suggest that their attitude 



