EDITORIAL 
Such is the confusion existing in botanical nomenclature 
that no matter what rules are adopted for naming plants, some 
pretext will be seized upon for getting in a few new names. 
The recent International Botanical Congress which met in 
Vienna, adopted a set of rules that are apparently far in ad- 
vance of any others looking toward a stable nomenclature, but 
even these, it seems, will make way for numerous changes. In 
the early days of botany, even the leaders had a very shadowy 
conception of species, a still more hazy notion as to generic 
relationships and an absolute lack of honesty in the application 
of plant names. If the names given to a plant by its dis- 
coverers did not happen to please the tastes of the next one 
who wrote of it, he did not hesitate to give it a new name. 
Often a dozen or more different names were given the same 
plant unintentionally by workers in different parts of the world 
who had not the facilities that we have for ascertaining what 
is going on in the science. But whether intentional or unin- 
tentional the multiplicity of names has made a fine chaos out of 
which each modern botanist thinks he can erect an ideal nomen- 
clatural cosmos if only the rest would adopt his rules. Thus 
it happens, that innovations are constantly proposed. Although 
all the world may be unanimous in the use of certain plant 
names there are plenty of botanists who would adopt new and 
strange names in place of them simply because the strange 
ones were given first. That the latter failed to get into use 
seems to them of no significance. 
For our own part, we are inclined to look upon the name 
of a plant as simply a convenient means of handling it mentally, 
and to insist first of all that it be stable and unchanging. What 
earthly difference does it make what a plant is called, so long 
as the name is one that everyone recognizes? And yet these 
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