156 



Annals of Horticulture. 



with a revision of the names. The labor was undertaken with 

 a full knowledge of its difficulties and of the impossibility of 

 arriving at safe conclusions in all cases ; and it was expected 

 that the work should be simply preliminary to a more thorough 

 study of the subject at some future time. In the main, the 

 effort of this committee has met the approval of the seedsmen 

 and writers of the country, and it is but fair to the dealers to 

 say that the experimenters have not pushed the reform. The 

 rules were endorsed by the American Seed Trade Association 

 at its last meeting, and a committee was created for the pur- 



Nomen- pose of fully considering the whole question of nomenclature. 



clature. g ome seedsmen are adopting the rules gradually, in such a 

 manner as not to overthrow too suddenly the existing names. 

 One of the clearest advances in this direction is the dropping 

 of the possessives by James M. Thorburn & Co. : e. g., Thor- 

 burn Everbearing cucumber, instead of Thorburn' s Ever- 

 bearing. 



The work of the committee on nomenclature of the Society 

 of American Florists really belongs to the subject of synonymy, 

 as was pointed out last year. * There is necessity for a specific 

 code concerning the form of the name of varieties of ornamental 

 plants, and if the florists' committee were to undertake this 

 labor with the same energy with which it has prosecuted the 

 nonymy SUD j eCL of synonymy, great progress would soon be made in 

 the application of "brevity, accuracy and good taste" to the 

 names of flowers. The committee is called upon, of course, 

 to decide upon the proper form of the scientific name of the 

 species, but specific and generic names already proceed upon 

 recognized rules, and the determination of them is a botanical 

 rather than a horticultural question. The florists' committee 

 on synonymy is rendering the cause of revised nomenclature 

 great aid, however, as any one will at once observe upon 

 reading its last report, f and it is giving profound moral sup- 

 port to the popular demand for ingenuous catalogue-making. 

 Other discussions. Other important general movements of 

 Roads, tne year are the continued discussions upon country roads, 

 etc - the agitation of rural free mail-delivery systems, and the pros- 

 ecution of the statistical elaborations of the eleventh census. J 



* Annals for 1890, 129. 

 fProc. Soc. Am. Flor. vii. 84. 



JFor a full outline of the census investigation of pomologjcal questions, see paper on the 

 subiect before the American Pomological Society, by Mortimer Whitehead. 



