Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/136

 116 BOTANICAL NOMENCLATURE. of names, it is customary to select the earliest published. I agree, however, with the late Sereno "Watson* that "there is nothing whatever of an ethical character inherent in a name, through any priority of publication or position, which should render it morally obligatory upon anyone to accept one name rather than another." And in point of fact Linnaeus and the early systematists attached little importance to priority. The rigid application of the principle involves the assumption that all persons who describe or attempt to describe plants are equally competent to the task. But this is so far from being the case that it is sometimes all but impossible even to guess what could possibly have been meant, f In 1872 Sir Joseph Hooker]: wrote: "The number of species described by authors who cannot determine their affinities increases annually, and I regard the naturalist who puts a described plant into its proper position in regard to its allies as rendering a greater service to science than its describer when he either puts it into a wrong place or throws it into any of those chaotic heaps, miscalled genera, with which systematic works still abound." This has always seemed to me not merely sound sense, but a scientific way of treating the matter. What we want in nomenclature is the maximum amount of stability and the minimum amount of change compatible with progress in perfecting our taxonomic system. Nomenclature is a means, not a end. There are perhaps 150,000 species of flowering plants in existence. What we want to do is to push on the task of getting them named and described in an intelligible manner, and their affinities determined as correctly as possible. We shall then have material for dealing with the larger problems which the vegetation of our globe will present when treated as a whole. To me the botanists who waste their time over priority are like boys who, when sent on an errand, spend their time in playing by the roadside. By such men even Linnaeus is not to be allowed to decide his own names. To one of the most splendid ornaments of our gardens he gave the name of Magnolia grandiflora: this is now to be known as Magnolia fcetida. The reformer himself is constrained to admit, "The change is a most unfortunate one in every way." § It is difficult to see what is gained by making it, except to render systematic botany ridiculous. The genus Asjjidium, known to every fern-cultivator, was founded by Swartz. It now contains some 400 species, of which the vast majority were of course unknown to him at the time; yet the names of all these are to be changed because Adanson founded a genus, Dryopteris, which seems to be the same thing as Aspidiuni. What, it may be asked, is gained by the change ? To science it is certainly t Darwin, who always seems to me, almost instinctively, to take the right view in matters relating to natural history, is (Life, vol. i. p. 364) dead against the new "practice of naturalists appending for perpetuity the name of the first describer to species." He is equally against the priority craze : — " I cannot yet bring myself to reject very well-known names " (ibid. p. 369). I Flora of British India, i. vii. § Garden and Forest, ii. 615.
 * Nature, xlvii. 54.