1096 The American Naturalist. [December, 
tain form than which is the most convenient and suitable. The sense 
of subjective justice is naturally different with each critic; let one con- 
sider only the bitter discussion over the so called Kew Rule or ‘ object- 
ive priority’ and the closely connected questions of designations of 
authority. The one thinks that he who first described a species, or 
much more he who first named it, has unquestionably rendered the 
greatest service in connection with it, the other puts the work of the 
author who first placed a species in the proper genus so high that his name 
must stand under all circumstances. This cult of priority as a postu- 
late of inherent justice takes on a truly grotesque form with the Amer- 
ican theologist Greene; he resembles to a hair the political legitimism 
over which history has long since passed to the order of the day. 
“©. Kuntze appears not to share this romantic conception, although 
he seems to hold the not less strange illusion of his position over other 
botanists. He will sacrifice a portion of his * well earned rights,’ but 
only for the concession that the new congress lay aside its dictatorship. 
He thinks that he possesses a source of power by which to bring the 
whole botanical world, present and future, under his yoke. 
“ The second fundamental error has clearly arisen out of a mistaken 
conception of the juristic form in which the late illustrious A. deCan- 
dolle edited the rules of nomenclature in the form of a statute book. 
Here also there can be no doubt that only an agreement for reasons of 
expediency was submitted, which has been followed by the majority of 
describing botanists by common consent. With what right can Kuntze 
reproach the Kew botanists who have never recognized the laws with 
non-observance of these rules? But on no account can the resolutions 
stand as a law for the enforcement of which the community of botanists 
must lend their strong hand without refusal, as the state to civil laws. 
Still less can the defects of this statute book, its silence concerning 
questions which then were not on the order of the day, be misused for 
advocates-tricks as, for example, O. Kuntze has done in the matter of 
beginning priority of genera with 1735. The law says, as we know, 
that in nomenclature one shall not go back of Linne. Standard works 
of the master are not specially named. A. deCandolle in his remarks 
2 In this place, as in many others in the article, Messrs. Ascherson and Engler 
misrepresent Kuntze’s attitude. Dr. Kuntze reproaches the Kew botanists be- 
cause they persist in following their own personal inclinations and refuse to con- 
sider themselves bound by any rules—not because having recognized the Paris 
Code, they violate it. He compares their obstinacy with that of the English 
ig who persist in measuring by yards, feet and ee after every one else 
has adopted an international and rational system.—R. P. 
