26 



THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



once take up the new name. Nieuwland, however, seems to 

 have some doubts of such proceedings, for he says : "Now that 

 Pteretis is found to antedate Matteucia, we wonder whether it 

 will be found worthy or acceptable in spite of its priority. We 

 have seen so many cases, lately, of rejected names boasting 

 priority since 1753 that we feel that all the much-vaunted state- 

 ments of fealty to the fetich of priority are meaningless noise 

 or waste of good type space." 



New Ways of Naming Plants. — One sometimes won- 

 ders what the leaders of the ''amiable science" would do were 

 it not for the changing styles in nomenclature. Botany, how- 

 ever, can never be monotonous when a new way of naming 

 plants, with consequent changes in the author citation, is in- 

 vented every few years. Once it was the rule to give each dis- 

 tinct species two names, one generic and one specific. Plants 

 that differed slightly from the species were called varieties and 

 catalogued under the species, often without a distinct appela- 

 tion. But just as in the business world where success in an 

 undertaking often depends upon the utilization of the waste 

 products, so in botany the waste left after making species, upon 

 being worked over, has given rise to several new industries and 

 made the workers more or less famous. First of all, the old 

 species have been carefully re-examined to separate them from 

 any clinging particles of botanical waste and the residue has 

 been clarified and sorted into sub-species, races, varieties, 

 forms, mutants, elementar)^ species, and gardeners varieties. 

 Even the species have been carefully refined and representa- 

 tives appear as types, co-types, paratypes and some others. But 

 the real industry arises from the lesser forms. There is now 

 the sub-species which is regarded as pretty nearly a species and 

 is given three^technical names, generic, specific and subspecific. 

 A variety also has three names with "var." written before the 

 last one. This is supposed to distinguish it from a sub-species. 

 Forms are written like varieties with "f" or "forma" before the 



