5th January, 
7 
Dear Mr Ram shot tom. 
Times change! I now have the honour to ask your 
advice in a problem concerning the taxonomy or Phanerogams 
I think that I mentioned in a letter last year that I 
was studying trees in order to write a book about our 
common ones. I have therefore been at pains to verity 
their botanical names in accordance with earliest usage 
and so on. Many names used in Malaya [as given in 
Ridley’s Flora.) are obsolete, so that we ili d in 
Durkill's Dictionary different names for many common 
species. Burkill has followed Merrill in adopting 
these new names. Having discovered accidentally, ana not 
oy ’a priori * reason, that so man is wholly reliable, 
I am distressed to say that Merrill ia not to oe pieced 
even in the superior ranks of the less reliable: ail nis 
proposals must be checked very carefully. In checking 
Merrill's new names for the three common species of 
Artocarpus, namely the Bread-fruit, the Jack-fruit and 
the Chempadak, I find not merely that nis names are not 
final or any better then previous ones, but that there is 
8 titanic confusion. Indeed, when you have perused the 
attached notes, you will agree that nobody can yet. say 
what are the correct ootanipal names ot these tnree 
species. My first inclination was to call them by their 
vernacular names, which every m.alay child knows, and to 
say that botanists, as yet, could not recognise them. 
J. Ramsbottou, Dsq., 
British Museum, Gromell Road, 
T - Q. 7 ,’MOT AW-n 
