THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



115 



According to a recent news item a certain city in Illinois is 

 planning to reduce ivy-poisoning by placarding all spots in 

 which the poison ivy is known to grow. The placards are to 

 be similar tO' those used to^ indicate contagious diseases. The 

 whole proceeding is typical of the way in which the average 

 botanist looks at a practical matter. A practical man would 

 likely suggest that while the health officer was securing and 

 tacking' up his warnings, an able-bodied laborer, immune to 

 poison ivy, would be able to destroy all the poison ivy in the 

 town. The botanist, however, puts his trust in anathemas and 

 in signs reading "keep oflf the grass." 



* >H >K 



Ever since a certain school of botanists in this country 

 set out with the apparent purpose of tagging every variation 

 in plants with a generic and specific name, there have been 

 various and sundry animadversions in the public press against 

 the wicked habit of species-splitting and name-tinkering. As 

 a matter of fact the business has been a bit overdone in certain 

 groups of plants, but there are signs of returning sanity in 

 the recent manuals which refuse, though still with some hesi- 

 tation, to accept the species maker's statement that there are 

 eight or nine hundred species of haw^thorn in America. The 

 contention made by people who wish to study something be- 

 sides plant names is that all this name changing does not get 

 anybody anywhere. Changing the names of plants adds 

 nothing but difficulty and confusion to the study of botany. 

 Fortunately the specific names of plants are not likely to be 

 changed very much in future, the available changes seeming 

 to be about used up, but the stability of names is now threat- 

 ened from a new quarter. There is being manifested a desire 

 to split up each g'enus into as many new genera as there are 

 species — or sometimes more. At present there is no recognized 

 basis for establishing genera and each botanist is a law unto 

 himself. Cases are not unheard of in which the possession 



