AmNovr;if9hrm'}  Revision  of  the  U.  S.  Pharmacopeia.  515 
September,  1892,  at  which  this  subject  was  a  prominent  topic  of 
discussion,  and  an  international  committee  was  appointed  to  consider 
the  same.  The  decisions  of  the  Genoa  congress  have  not  been 
unanimously  adopted  and  at  the  International  Congress,  called  for 
August,  1893,  at  Madison,  Wis.,  another  attempt  was  to  have  been 
made  toward  an  universal  agreement.  Dr.  Otto  Kuntze,  the  fore- 
most nomenclaturist,  accepts  no  authority,  and  on  priority  alone 
would  set  aside,  as  he  says,  hundreds  of  Bentham  and  Hooker's 
names  for  genera,  ana  in  his  Revisio  Generum  Plantarum  ( 1 891 ) 
proposes  changes  affecting  the  names  of  many  thousands  of  plants. 
By  a  single  sentence,  the  generic  name  Astragalus  is  replaced  by 
Tragacantha,  changing  thus  the  names  of  1,500  species  {ibid.,  pp. 
210  and  940).  Strangely  this  change  has  not  been  adopted  by  the 
Pharmacopoeia.  It  is  known  that  the  botanical  authorities  at  Berlin, 
astounded  by  the  confusion  likely  to  result  from  this  publication  of 
Kuntze,  proposed,  in  the  latter  part  of  1892,  amending  the  code  of 
1867,  and  have  suggested  a  revision  of  the  same  and  significant 
omen,  exceptions  to  this  law  of  priority  in  a  number  of  genera  cover- 
ing about  5,000  species.  It  is  a  query  if  the  nomenclaturists  practi- 
cally adopt  their  own  suggestions  and  reclassify  and  label  their  her- 
barium specimens  with  each  change  proposed,  or  whether  their 
theories  remain  on  paper  ?  It  will  also  be  interesting  to  note  how 
many  of  these  names  will  survive  till  the  pharmacopceial  revision 
of  1900. 
This  argument  has  been  extended  very  much  beyond  what  was 
originally  intended.  But  the  anomalous  position  of  the  committee 
is  such  as  to  cause  comment.  To  cast  aside  well -recognized  names 
and  authorities,  and  to  accept  rules  which  were  presented  by  a  com- 
mittee of  the  Botanical  Section  of  the  A.  A.  A.  S.  within  24  hours 
of  the  time  of  their  appointment,  and  which  had  not  withstood  the 
test  of  application,  and  to  reject  rules  adopted  by  the  Chemical 
Section  of  the  same  Association  when  presented  by  a  committee 
whose  labors  lasted  for  more  than  4  years,  seems  inexplicable,  par- 
ticularly so,  when  the  committee  appointed  by  the  International 
Congress  of  Botanists  at  Genoa,  to  consider  this  subject,  had  not 
completed  their  work. 
There  will  always  be  a  number  of  changes  in  the  botanical  names 
of  plants,  necessarily  caused  by  mistakes  in  classification  or  other 
errors  of  botanists,  for  even  they  do  err,  as,  for  example,  it  is  known 
