June, 1921] ARTHUR — SPECIALIZATION AND FUNDAMENTALS 
281 
As already indicated, the regulations for selecting and validating the 
correct name of a plant have been slow in taking shape. It has long been 
recognized, more and more strongly of late, that the name first given to a 
particular species of plant must be considered its proper and legal name. 
The difficulty has been to secure agreement upon the particular name to 
be considered as having precedence. The difficulty is somewhat the same 
as the courts of justice have in proving that the name on the docket properly 
belongs to the person before the bar. The latest move among nomen- 
claturists is to follow the methods of the law courts, wholly abandoning the 
attempt to prove that the name is correctly used and being content with 
making sure of the identity of the person in question, or, in botany, estab- 
lishing the identity of the particular specimen of plant which was in hand 
when a name was published. This is known as the type-basis method, 
and promises to bring definiteness and exactness where before was the 
uncertainty of individual interpretation. Nature has not provided us 
with species and genera, but only with individuals having greater or less 
resemblances. As botanists we find it convenient to treat individuals 
possessing a certain amount of resemblance as species, and these species we 
group into genera. The size and variability of the units we call species 
and genera will depend in each case upon the taxonomic views held at the 
time, but the name, according to the type-basis method, must always find 
its application in accord with the characteristics possessed by the original 
specimen upon which it was founded. 
Having now said something about the desirability of knowing plants at 
first hand, and about the application of their names, permit me to say a few 
words about the names themselves. Since the days of Linnaeus, names of 
plants have been binomial, with tendencies now and then to become tri- 
nomial, quadrinomial, or even multinomial, but never monomial. Evo- 
lution of the onomatology of plants has many parallelisms to that of persons. 
In the early days, that is, before the middle of the eighteenth century for 
plants, and before the tenth century for persons, names either of plants or 
of persons might consist of a single word, or on the other hand might be of 
indeterminate length. For persons there was a gradual evolution into a 
surname and given name, while for plants a far more rapid change brought 
about the corresponding generic and specific name. The names of persons 
are not established by law, but by usage. The first name applied to an 
individual, however obtained, is almost invariably accepted in after years, 
and yet there is no law in this country or in England, and certainly not 
elsewhere, against changing a name; nevertheless, certain states have 
provided a process by which a change may receive legal sanction, if such is 
desired. The case of plants is almost identical, except the last provision 
for validating a name. But the movement is well under way to provide 
fixed rules to serve as a guide in the bestowal of plant names, to indicate 
the correct names previously given, and to secure their maintenance, which 
