Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/251

 229 SHORT NOTES. LiMNANTHEMUM PELTATUM IN S. LiNcoLN. — This species was Sent to me last season from the lake in Syston Hall Park, near Grantham. I wrote to Sir John H. Thorold to enquire if it had been planted there to his knowledge, and received the following information: — " This plant appeared in the lake at Syston some ten to fifteen years ago. It must have been brought by one of the wildfowl which frequent the water, as I do not know of any in this district. The single plant first noticed has spread all over the lake, and has become a nuisance ; luckily it cannot grow in deep water." I have a note, but no specimen, of its occurrence between Grantham and Woolsthorpe, in the Grantham and Nottingham Canal, between 1860 and 1870. Would it be bird-sown there? — E. Adrian Woodruffe-Peacock. " Carex depauperata Curt. Cat." (p. 185). — Mr. Britten says that this name must replace C. ventrlcosa. But why so, if the rejection of nomma niida^ constantly advocated in these pages, be a rule of any value? Besides this, it is surely unreasonable, and therefore unscientific, to supersede a well-considered name, accom- panied by figure and description, in favour of a mere catalogue-title, which was deliberately withdrawn by its author himself. I hope that other British botanists will join me in declining to accept the above pronouncement. — Edward S. Marshall. It does not appear to me that a name as to the application of which there has never been any doubt is what is generally under- stood as a nomea nudum. In the present instance, as I have already shown (p. 186), there is no possibility of doubt. I print Mr. Marshall's note because he specially requests me to do so ; but the points he raises were fully considered by me before I wrote mine. Mr. Marshall is entirely in error in supposing C. depauperata to be •* a mere catalogue-title"; if he had read my note more carefully he would have seen that it is adopted by Withering, who gives a full description. Whether the name be cited as '' C. depauperata Curt. Cat. 92 (1783)," or as "C. depauperata Curt. Cat. u. 228 ex With. Bot. Arr. ed. 2. 1049 (1787)," or even as " C. depauperata With. Arr. ed. 2. 1049 (1787)," is practically immaterial : what is certain is that in any case it antedates — " C. ventricosa Curt. Fl. Lond. fasc. vi. t. 68," which (cf. Journ. Bot. 1895, 113) can hardly date earlier than 1790. The contention that an author has a right to withdraw a name which he has published can hardly be made seriously ; being public property, he has no longer any control over it. I do not think British botanists will accept Mr. Marshall's invitation to join him in declining to adopt what is, on every ground, the earliest name. — James Britten.