5 
enumeration included in Bryophytes where they properly belong, 
although they were placed by Linnaeus in algae as well as the genus 
Lichen with 80 species. The genus Tremella * with 7 species was also 
included in algae although as far as the scant descriptions can be 
identified, 3 are species of fungi, 3 algae and one a lichen. Some of 
the 12 species of Byssus are algae but the majority it is impossible to 
recognize. Of the 11 species of Spongia nearly all are animals. 
Of the later editions of the Species Plantarum the fourth, according 
to some the fifth, has a partial revision of the fungi by Link and of the 
mosses by Schwaegrichen, but as these parts were not published until 
1824-30 and do not follow in any way the original edition of Linnaeus, 
so far as priority of nomenclature is concerned, they need not be 
considered here. Of the Systema Plantarum, Reichard 1780 and the 
Systema Vegetabilium by Gmelin, 1796, by Persoon 1797 and Sprengel 
1827, it can be said that although they include more species than the 
original edition of Linnaeus they are open to the same objections and, 
as will be seen later, the dates of their publication are so near those of 
far better works that their nomenclatorial value is of trivial importance. 
If I have dwelt at what may seem too great length on a consideration 
of the value of the Species Plantarum as a basis of nomenclature it has 
been for the purpose of trying to make clear to those to whom uni- 
formity in nomenclature seems to be of the first importance, why it is 
that to expect cryptogamists to adopt the Species on the same basis as 
do phaenoganiists is unreasonable. To the latter the Species repre- 
sents a fundamental treatise; to the former a very meagre and unsatis- 
factory list of plants belonging to groups of which, in the time of 
Linnaeus, there was really no exact knowledge. 
One would be glad to adopt as a basis of nomenclature some one 
work which bears the same relation to cryptogams as does the Species 
Plantarum to phaenogams, but there has never been any such work and 
there never will be for a very good reason. The phaenogams form a 
homogeneous group. The cryptogams do not, but consist of a num- 
ber of different groups and the fundamental works relating to them 
appeared at different dates, all, however, considerably later than 1753. 
The specialists who study Bryophytes, Lichens, Algae and Fungi are 
entirely justified in adopting different works as a basis of nomenclature. 
* See note at end of this paper. 
