ORAY PHALAROPE. 
135 
learned president of the Linnsean Society, “ is, from the 
multitude of objects with which it is conversant* 
necessarily so encumbered with names, that students 
require every possible assistance to facilitate the attain- 
ment of those names, and have a just right to complain 
of every needless impediment. Nor is it allowable to 
alter such names, even for the better. In our science, 
the names established throughout the works of Linnseus 
are become current coin, nor can they be altered without 
great inconvenience.”^ 
That there is a property in names, as well as in 
things, will not be disputed ; and there are few naturalists 
who would not feel as sensibly a fraud committed on 
their nomenclature as on their purse. The ardour with 
which the student pursues his researches, and the 
solicitude which he manifests in promulgating his dis- 
coveries under appropriate appellations, are proofs that 
at least part of his gratification is derived from the 
supposed distinction which a name will confer upon 
him ; deprive him of this distinction, and you inflict a 
wound upon his self-love which will not readily be 
healed. 
To enter into a train of reasoning to prove that he 
who first describes and names a subject of natural 
history, agreeable to the laws of systematic classification, 
is for ever entitled to his name, and that it cannot be 
superseded without injustice, would be useless, because 
they are propositions which all naturalists deem self- 
evident. Then how comes it, whilst we are so tenacious 
of our own rights we so often disregard those of others ? 
I would now come to the point. It will be perceived 
that I have ventured to restore the long neglected name 
of fulicaria. That I shall be supported in this restora- 
tion I have little doubt, when it shall have been made 
manifest that it was Linnseus himself who first named 
this species. A reference to the tenth edition of the 
* An Introduction to Physiological and Systematical Botany , 
chap. 12. 
