THE FERN BULLETIN 



61 



Already it is plain that fern students are to be schooled 

 in the new names. In the publication Nephrodium has 

 already been replaced by the distasteful and altogether 

 unwarranted Dryopteris, while the name Cystopteris, 

 of world-wide use has been abandoned for the absurd 

 Filix. Now that the step has been taken, it must give 

 the great majority of the members the American Fern 

 Society a feeling of chagrin to discover that they have 

 been used as cat's-paws to rake the chestnuts of the 

 "American Code" advocates out of the fire. And 

 what a spectacle is presented by this whole nomencla- 

 tural discussion! A lot of grown up men wrangling 

 about the christening of a plant and some of them do- 

 ing nothing else but splitting hairs about it; making 

 of themselves a new kind of "Old Mortality" in an 

 endeavor to secure credit for some dead-and-gone 

 plant collector, who during his life was blissfully un- 

 conscious of the point at issue and being dead cares 

 nothing for it now. No wonder that the general pub- 

 lic regards a botanist at a sort of anthropological freak 

 and something hardly to be treated seriously. 

 * * * 



The present officers of the Fern Society are out 

 with the suggestion that "perhaps it would be better 

 to have the officers serve a longer term and avoid 

 having the elections recur so often." This is the idea 

 that always gets into the heads of office holders. They 

 cannot see why anybody should not be satisfied to 

 have them serve always. Each feels that it would be 

 a fine thing to have a king, if he might be entrusted 

 to select him. "Perhaps it would be better" to have 

 the elections occur annually as at present and give us 

 a chance to get rid of an undesirable officer with neat- 

 ness and dispatch. Just at this moment, when the 

 people everywhere are demanding the recall, with a 



