234 
INTRODUCTION TO BOTANY. 
majority of readers the power of referring to so many 
works, some probably very expensive; nor does the mere 
quoting of these trivial names, and the works in which 
they are used, give the same satisfaction to the reader, as 
common types with specific differences, while it is equally 
long in reading, although, from the contractions used in 
printing the titles of the books, it appears much shorter 
to the eye, it is not so easy to remember. 
To avoid in part these inconveniences, it has lately been 
proposed, when plants are removed from one genus to an- 
other, to give the preference, in all cases, to the adjunct 
given by Linnaeus himself, or the first of his followers who 
has mentioned the plant, unless this adjunct has been al- 
ready applied to some other species in the genus into which 
it is removed : but the changes made by Linnaeus, and still 
more those by his followers, have so embroiled the science, 
in applying the names of the older authors to far different 
plants than those to which they were originally applied; as 
melia, a name given by the ancients to a species of ash, is 
applied by them to an Indian shrub; bromelia, another 
species of Grecian ash, to an American tree; and gingidium, 
the name of a Greek umbelliferous plant, to a plant of the 
South Sea Islands ; that it would appear necessary to go 
still further back, and to establish as a canon, that the 
name given to a plant by the oldest author, who has so 
described, or otherwise designated the plant, in the lan- 
guage in which we speak or write, as to render us certain 
of its due application to the plant of which we treat, shall 
be esteemed the preferable name for it, although the sub- 
stantive should not be the same as the name of the genus 
under which it is arranged in the system that may happen 
to be in fashion; indeed, if this anomaly should, contrary 
to the opinion and practice of Ray, who always used the 
names of the authors whose writings were in common cir- 
culation, although the substantive might be different, be 
esteemed of any consequence, the method used by Boer- 
haave, of connecting the name of the genus when different 
from the substantive, by the introduction of the relative 
and the ellipsis of the substantive verb, in the manner by 
which the synonyms of Ray have been quoted, as for ex- 
ample, the adiantum album crispum alpinum of Schw’enck- 
feld being placed by Ray in his genus, Filix fcemina, is 
thus quoted in vol. ii. p. 16 , Filix foemina quae (est) Adi- 
antum album, &c. By this means alone can the perm a- 
