38 
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE 
text or synonymy, the manuscript, herbarium, museum, collection or 
garden, should be cited. {Lam. ex Commers . in herb. Paris: Lindley ex 
horto Lobb ; Martyn ex coll. Soland. ; Gray ex Leach MSS., etc.) DC. 
The publication of the name is the essential fact, for it is that which preserves the 
name from change except for grave reasons. The publisher has taken the principal 
step. The ti-aveller who has obtained a specimen, and has perhaps given it a provi- 
sional name in his collection, merits our gratitude, and may have more claims to it 
than the editor of the name; whence it becomes extremely proper to cite him, in the 
mention of the habitat or the collection accompanying the description. But it is not 
he who has made it public at a certain date, and if he had been consulted perhaps he 
would have applied another name to it. It is in the interest of precision therefore to 
cite, in botany, for example, the name of Spruce for a plant named and distributed by 
him, though described later by Bentham; and to cite Bentham for a plant of Hartweg, 
distributed by the latter under a number without a name, but afterward named by 
Bentham. It would be inexact to act otherwise, and unjust to the old naturalists. 
Commerson, for example, left plants in herbaria without publishing them. If they 
were published now, so great have been the changes in the science of Botany, they 
would indicate a condition of things of which that zealous collector, were he living, 
would be probably among the first to ri ygnize the falsity. (DC.) 
This, however, cannot be held to apply to cases where one working naturalist sub- 
mits to another the result of his studies, to enable the former to complete a monograph 
or correctly interpret a fauna. In such instances the work may reasonably be consid- 
ered a joint affair, and the names due to the one or the other as the case may be. 
§ XLVIII. When an existing name is changed in value, from being 
raised to a higher rank or reduced to a lower rank than that it originally 
held, the change is equivalent to the creation of a new group, and the 
author to be cited is he who has made the change. (DC.) 
It is a common but objectionable practice to cite the author of a section or family as 
the authority for a genus or order, or the reverse. By this negligence the opinion of 
the primitive author is misrepresented, and the reader is deceived in regard to the 
date of later name. (DC.) 
§ XLIX. The authority following the name of an organism is unless 
very short, usually indicated by an abbreviation. To effect this the par- 
ticles or preliminary letters which do not strictly form part of the name 
are dispensed with, then the first letters are indicated without omitting 
any. If a name of one syllable is sufficiently complicated to be worth the 
trouble of abbreviating, the first consonants are indicated (Br. for Brown) ; 
if the name has two or more syllables, the first syllable plus the first letter 
of the second (or the first two if they are consonants) is made use of 
(Juss, for Jussieu; Rich, for Richard). 
When less abbreviation is desirable to avoid confounding two names 
commencing with similar syllables, the same system is followed by giving 
the first two syllables with one or two of the consonants of the third, or 
adding one of the last characteristic consonants of the name (Bertol. for 
Bertoloni, to distinguish it from Bertero; Michx. for Michaux as opposed 
to Micheli; or Lamx. for Lamouroux as distinguished from Lamarck). 
Christian names are abbreviated in a similar manner (Adr. Juss. for 
Adrien Jussieu; Gaertn. fils or Gaertn, f. for Gaertner junior, etc.). 
