ORCHID CONFERENCE. 



303 



he utterly declined to admit that there was any difference in 

 principle between the nomenclature of Orchids and that of any 

 other plants whatever. He thought one great difficulty in Orchid 

 nomenclature had arisen from people not minding their own 

 business. He hoped they would not accuse him of not minding 

 his own business because he was talking of Orchids, with which 

 he was not specially familiar ; but he might illustrate what he 

 meant. Botanists had a regular code of nomenclature, and there 

 were rules laid down which every botanist obeyed more or less 

 loyally. If they would all only obey them strictly, and act up to 

 the spirit of them, all would be well. They could then find out 

 every blunder, correct it if necessary, always have a reference at 

 hand in case of need, and be as well off as any philological 

 student who had his dictionary or grammar to refer to. But 

 when he came to the gardeners and nurserymen, what did he 

 find ? He did not wish to speak disrespectfully of them in other 

 respects, far from it, but he found that they trenched on the 

 botanists' ground. They did not mind their own business ; they 

 gave names. Of course they had a perfect right to do this if 

 they liked, provided their names were cast in such a form 

 as to cause no sort of confusion between them and botanical 

 names. If horticulturists would not adopt a system, as botanists 

 had done, they should at least mind their own business, and not 

 try to imitate botanical names. He would advocate, for garden 

 plants at least, simply provisional or fancy names, and would 

 urge that nurserymen and gardeners should on no account be 

 allowed to give a Latin, still less a Greek name to a plant, 

 unless accompanied by a properly drawn up description by 

 means of which it could be recognized. If they did otherwise, 

 they were almost certain to tumble into a botanical blunder ; 

 and in all cases they gave rise to great confusion and difficulty, 

 because there was no standard publication in which such names 

 were collected. This brought him to another point. The Royal 

 Horticultural Society had a rule, which he was sorry to say was 

 greatly more honoured in the breach than in the observance, 

 that no plant should be shown before its Committees unless it 

 had been properly named. He took the meaning of that to be 

 this — that if it were considered to be a true species, it should 

 be botanically named, and should not receive in any way the 

 sanction of any one of the Committees until that name had 



