Page:Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Volume 12.djvu/267

Rh conspicuous among the works which have conduced to the latter object. Their authors have, in this instance, wisely exercised that discretionary paramount authority, which belongs only to the leaders in Botany, of overruling a prior claim of nomenclature. Instead of setting up the original Anthericum, they have retained that name for the numerous species to which it is popularly applied, and which make the bulk of the genus as Linnæus and his followers have subsequently understood it. Hence a very troublesome degree of perplexity is avoided; especially as these writers must otherwise either have invented a new name, or have restored Bulbine, already differently applied by Gærtner. They certainly knew better than to take up with Tournefort's Phalangium, which is appropriated to a genus of insects.

The author of the Flora Britannica indeed, aware of the above-mentioned confusion and pretensions respecting Anthericum, had exercised the same discretionary power, following Mr. Hudson in his name of Tofleldia. Under this is commemorated Mr. Tofield, a country gentleman in the neighbourhood of Doncaster, who there discovered the Vicia bithynica, a plant which had escaped the notice of Ray and the botanists of his time, though since observed in other parts of England. The herbarium of Mr. Tofield came, in 1793, after his decease, into the possession of Dr. Younge of Sheffield, F.L.S.

Jussieu, led by Gerard, has transferred Mœring's name of Narthecium to our Tofieldia; from an idea, as it appears, that the real Narthecium of that author belonged to this genus, though nothing can be more distinct. We believe it to be no less distinct from Anthericum, though retained in that genus, after Willdenow, in the Hortus Kewensis. The able M. Decandolle, not wishing perhaps to clash with Jussieu, has called this last plant