1897.] Botany. 533 
der Systematischen Botanik) Winter, Luerssen, Limpricht and others 
(Rabenhorsts’s Kryptogamen Floravon Deutschland, Oesterrich und der 
Schweiz), Schroeter (Die Pilze Schlesiens) and Engler and Prantl (Die 
Natiirlichen Planzenfamilien) group the families (Familien) under 
orders ( Ordnungen, Reihen). Over against this commendable prac- 
tice we may contrast the common English and American manuals, as 
Hooker’s Students British Flora, Bentham’s Handbook of the British 
Flora. Gray’s Manual of Botany, Coulter's Manual of Rocky Mountain 
Botany, Watson’s Botany of California, and Bentham and Hooker’s 
Genera Plantarum, in all of which Order and Family are treated as 
synonymous terms. Now and then we find a work in which these 
terms are treated as not synonymous, but, curiously, Family is placed 
above Order. Twenty or more years ago, Cooke, in his Handbook of 
British Fungi, used these terms in this reversed relation ; but little was 
thought of it since he never paid much attention to such details. Re- 
cently a work has appeared (Warming’s Handbook of Systematic Bot- 
any, translated by Potter) which is so useful in many ways that it must 
be widely used, in which the orders are made secondary to the fami- 
lies. Thus we find the “Family” Gasteromycetee containing the 
* Orders” Tylostomacece, Lycoperdacee, Sclerodermat , Nidulariacee 
and Hymenogastracee, the “ Family” Sazifraginae containing the 
“Orders” Crassulacew, Saxifragacee, Ribesiacee, Hydrangeacee, Pitto- 
sporacee, Hamamelidacee, Platanacee and Podostemacee. We hoped 
that this confusion would find no foothold in America, but we observe 
that Thaxter in his great Monograph of the Laboulbeniacee follows the 
undesirable ee by subdividing the Family Laboulbeniacee into 
three “ Orders 
It should not be necessary to argue for uniformity of practice in the 
two branches of Nature-study, Botany and Zoology ; that appears to be 
almost self-evident ; but these later exceptions show that there is danger 
that we shall have more and more cases of violation of the rule. It is 
not a matter of small moment. It is not true that botanists may be a 
_ law unto themselves in such matters. Every man, however much he 
may have deepened his work until he may be said to have mastered 
some particular field of the science, must remember that to a large ex- 
tent his work must be followed and reviewed by men who, for a time, 
at least, work in more than one field. Every biological student has a 
right to demand that specialists shall not add needlessly to the difficul- 
ties which confront him in his attempts to gain a knowledge of the 
rine grouping of plants and animals. So long as the botanists 
“Order” and “Family” indifferently for the same groups, the 
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