278 
LINNAEUS 
after many of his correspondents, pupils or older 
botanists. He considered it a great mark of distinc¬ 
tion, and those who received it from him, took it as 
a most flattering favour. It has been suggested that 
in thus bestowing names he, in some measure, detected 
a spiritual likeness between them and their names. 
In a certain degree it was so, as for instance, he gave 
the name Bauhinia to a genus with a peculiar two- 
bladed leaf, in memory of the eminent brothers 
Bauhin; then Commelina with flowers having two 
large and one small perianth-segment, from three 
brothers Commelyn, two eminent and the third 
insignificant as naturalists; whilst Plukenet, known as 
displaying bizarre ideas, has his name bestowed on 
a plant with very irregular flowers. In many cases 
there is not the slightest reason to allege this 
occurrence, and before everything, one must strongly 
dissent from the repeated statement, that Linne gave 
the names of his friends to beautiful and stately 
plants, whilst he branded his opponents by giving 
their names to ugly or insignificant ones. Linne 
considered no plant ugly or insignificant; even the 
humblest was regarded the same as the stateliest. 
Boerhaavia , Forskolea , Loeflingia, Kcenigia and 
others were so called after persons for whom he had 
the heartiest good-will, though they are unpretentious, 
while Adansonia , bearing the name of an opponent, 
is one of the grandest trees in existence. Another 
misapprehension is with the genus Buffonia , at first 
and by accident published as “ Bufonia ” and there¬ 
fore acclaimed as a reference to Bufo, a toad—an 
entirely unwarranted assumption. 
He hated unnecessary words, and he himself 
wrote briefly and impressively, all his works showing 
system; his style was original, usually succinct, with¬ 
out a needless word in a description, often compressing 
into two lines more than his predecessors did in page- 
long descriptions. His striving after brevity increased 
as he grew in years, so that the purely scientific works 
