THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
71 
dealers in nomenclature ask us to change these names because 
some long-ago dead-and-gone botanist failed to receive credit 
for the names he made. Alas, for the sincerity of the nomen- 
claturists' professions, it is noticed that a change is seldom 
made unless somewhere in the shake-up his own name is at- 
tached to the new specific combination. Simmered right down 
to fundamentals we are asked to change a lot of names that a 
few botanists may be embalmed in print in the author-citation 
of species. Some of the most active workers in the field of 
nomenclature have contributed practically nothing to the sci- 
ence of botany. 
The common names spice-wood and sassafras, are known 
to nine-tenths of the people who have attained their majority 
in the region where these two plants grow, but we are abso- 
lutely certain that not nine-tenths, nor even one-tenth of the 
plant students know the scientific names of these same species. 
No longer are they entitled to those abominable "duplicate 
monomials" Benzoin Benzoin and Sassafras Sassafras nor yet 
to the more familiar appellations of Gray's Manual Lindera 
Benzoin and Sassafras officinale. Dr. B. L. Robinson in 
Rhodora for October has dug up a new name for each and 
according to the Vienna rules we should now write Benzoin 
Aestivale and Sassafras Variifoliunt. We say "should write" 
advisedly for whether this magazine will do so depends upon 
the amount of evidence forthcoming that these names are not 
to be changed again. The new name for the spice- wood is 
just as expressive as the old one and that for the sassafras is 
much more appropriate than any the plant has borne recently, 
but if these Vienna rules, under which the plants were re- 
named, will permit of another change in a few years, then we 
are going to wait for the last change even if we die before it 
comes, as in all likelihood we shall. 
