EXTRACTS TliOM PEOCEEUINGS. 



lix 



The following is a translation of M. DeCandolle's letter : — 



" I find (says the learned Professor) from the ' Gardeners' Chro- 

 nicle ' that your Committee, which has been so happily conceived 

 and judiciously constituted, is about to occupy itself with the no- 

 menclature of plants. Allow me to address a few observations, not 

 with the intention of supporting the rules which I laid before the 

 Congress at Paris in 1867 *, for they are in general agreeable to the 

 principles recognized by English botanists, but to render certain 

 details more perfect, and to prevent certain inconveniences, espe- 

 cially in what concerns the nomenclature of cultivated species. 



" I may remark, first, that it is always more easy to propose laws 

 than to apply them judiciously. This is obvious as regards civil 

 laws, the discussion of which in Parliament is simple in com- 

 parison with all the comments of advocates and judges before the 

 courts of justice. It is the same with respect to scientific ques- 

 tions. We assert, for example, that the names of species must 

 be in Latin; this is clear and simple enough thus generally 

 stated, but when applied we have frequently to ask, if a particular 

 word is Latin, what is its genitive, how it must be accented, &c. 

 Another application of the laws of nomenclature is to find the 

 name of a plant and to choose amongst several existent names 

 that which is not inappropriate. 



" I do not know whether the Committee will enter on the im- 

 mense field of applications ; but clearly it will be engaged in the 

 principles of nomenclature, and I hope that it will support every- 

 thing which has a tendency to improve the work to which I 

 devoted myself, together with a great number of botanists of 

 different countries, in 1867. It is with respect to cultivated 

 plants that the Committee is in a position to exert a beneficial 

 influence, and it is natural that botanists should wish to make 

 suggestions on a point of such difficulty. 



"I set out, in my ' Laws of Botanical Nomenclature,' from the 

 conviction that the numerous modifications of a cultivated spe- 

 cies may be regarded under two points of view — 



"a. The relative importance of the modifications, which pre- 

 supposes the study of the forms, and the degree of their here- 

 ditary relationship. 



* f Laws of Botanical Nomenclature adopted by the International Botanical 

 Congress held at Paris in August 18G7, with an historical introduction and a 

 commentary by Alph. DeCandolle.' London, 1868. Keeve & Co., Henrietta 

 Street. 



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