822 i The American Naturalist. [September, 
Of course, every one knows that grammatically the argument is a 
pretty strong one in favor of a partial capitalization, but something 
may be said on the other side, even on this ground. Primarily the 
specific name is a limiting or qualifying term, that is, it has an adjecti- 
val function, and as such it is properly written with the small initial 
letter. There should be no question as to such cases as virginiana, 
eoroliniana, pennsylvanica, ete. Linne himself wrote them with the 
small initial letter, as also Willdenow and Sprengel. Why then should 
there be any hesitancy in writing oakesiana, purshiana, kalmianum, 
etc.? Even in Gray's Manual we have sambucifolia, alnifolia, hyssopi- 
folius, nepeteefolia, ws most astonishing of all, fossombronioides. Wh 
the Italian F i should be decapitalized here, it will puzzle any 
advocate of capitalization to explain. 
Nothing is gained by capitalizing, and it requires some extra effort 
to remember whether to use the capital or not, while by decapitalizing 
we gain much in appearance of the printed page, and save appreciably 
in time and the effort to remember a complicated rule. 
CHARLES E. Bessey. 
The Use of Personal Names in Designating Species.'— 
The first sentence of the thirty-second article of the Paris Code is as 
follows: “The specific name ought, in general, to indicate something 
of the appearance, the characters, the origin, the history or the proper- 
ties of the species." The twenty-seventh section of the rules of nomen- 
clature adopted in 1877 by the zoologists of the American Association 
for the Advancement of Science (with the advice of Dr. Gray, and 
other botanists) is almost identical with the foregoing: “ The specific 
name should, in general, indicate some feature of the appearance, char- 
acters, origin, history or properties of the species.” The purpose of 
the rule cited is, without question, to favor the adoption of names 
which have some real significance, and when we look over the work of 
the great masters in descriptive botany we see how fully they followed 
its spirit. In the first and third editions of Linne’s “Species Planta- 
rum” nearly all the specific names are in some degree, descriptive. 
One finds names as follows (pp. 118-119) suecica, canadensis, tomentosa, 
trifoliata, viscosa, alternifolia, perennis, uniflora, biflora, umbellata, corym 
bosa, latifolia, ete. If we compare Linne’s practice with that of recent 
descriptive botanists we find a great change in the frequency with 
which personal names are used. In the first two hundred pages of 
Vol. I, of the first edition of the “ Species Plantarum, ” including about 
1 Read before the Botanical Club of the A. A. A. S., August 21, 1893. 
