Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/295

 271 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. XL — The Misuse of the Index Kewensis. At the risk of wearying the readers of this Journal by a further note on the vexed question of nomenclature, I am compelled to enter a protest against the mischievous misuse which seems likely to be made of Mr. Jackson's Lidex, and indeed is now being made by some botanists. There are already sufficient agencies at work upon the upsetting of nomenclature to render any addition to their number undesirable. But the confusion at present introduced, much of it unnecessarily, is as nothing to that which will ensue if the method adopted by Mr. Druce in the Annals of Scottish Natural History for April (p. 108) be followed. The paper on the London Catalogue which Mr. Druce printed in the Annals for January, and which was previously offered to this Journal, has already been criticized. Mr. Arthur Bennett and Mr. Marshall'^' have commented upon it with a severity which I cannot consider undeserved, and a short paragraph in these pages t suffi- ciently indicated grounds upon which it was open to criticism. Yet Mr. Druce still urges on his wild career, and in the April number of the Annals proceeds to point out "other changes" which "will still have to be made if we adhere to the law of priority." If Mr. Druce had taken the trouble to look up the references which he cites at second-hand from the Index Kewensis, there would be less ground of complaint. Though it seems to be repre- hensible to employ the work solely as an aid to name-changing, there is no doubt it can so be used, and any one who is ambitious of seeing his name appended to new combinations can no doubt secure it by this means. But unless he takes the trouble to verify his references, even this petty gratification will be denied him. I do not suggest that Mr. Druce has been actuated by this motive, though I confess I am unable to discover what object he has in view. I propose to call attention to one or two of the last twelve changes which he has proposed, and to show that on other grounds his mode of procedure is open to criticism. ''Horkelia, Eeichb., ex Bartling, ' Nar. [sic] Ord.,' 76 (1830) appears to be earher than Wolffia, Hork., in * Linnaea,' xiii. p. 389 (1839). Our plant would be Horkelia arrhiza (L.). It was the Lemna arrhiza of Linnaeus." Now if Mr. Druce had referred to Bartling's Ordines Naturales Plantarum, he would have found : — " Wolfia Hork. (Horkelia Reichenb.)." And if he had looked up what he calls "Hork. in 'Linnaea'" — meaning thereby, as Mr. Jackson more accurately notes, a paper by Schleiden in which Horkel's name is cited — he would have found Schleiden's protest against the change. t Journ. Bot. 1896, 95.
 * Ann. Scott. Nat. Hist. April, 1896, pp. 109-112.