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234 TNTRODUCTION TO BOTANY.
majority of readers the power of referring to so manyworks,
some probably very expensive; nor does the mere
quoting of these trivial names, and the works in which
they are used, give the same satisfaction to the reader, as
common types with specific differences, while it is equally
long in reading, although, from the contractions used in
printing the titles of the books, it appears much shorter
to the eye, it is not so easy to remember.
To avoid in part these inconveniences, it has lately been
proposed, when plants are removed from one genus to another,
to give the preference, in all cases, to the adjunct
given by Linneeus himself, or the first of his followers who
has mentioned the plant, unless this adjunct has been already
applied to some other species in the genus into which
it is removed : but the changes made by Linnaeus, and still
more those by his followers, have so embroiled the science,
in applying the names of the older authors to far different
plants than those to which they were originally applied; as
melia, a name given by the ancients to a species of ash, is
applied by them to an Indian shrub; bromelia, another
species of Grecian ash, to an American tree; and gingidium,
the name of a Greek umbelliferous plant, to a plant of the
South Sea Islands; that it would appear necessary to go
still further back, and to establish as a canon, that the
name given to a plant by the oldest author, who has so
described, or otherwise designated the plant, in the language
in which we speak or write, as to render us certain,
of its due application to the plant of which we treat, shall
be esteemed the preferable name for it, although the substantive
should not be the same as the name of the genus
'Under which it is arranged in the system that may happen
to be in fashion; indeed, if this anomaly should, contrary
to the opinion and practice of Ray, who always used" the
names of the authors whose writings were in common circulation,
although the substantive might be different, be
esteemed of any consequence, the method used by Boerhaave,
of connecting the name of the genus when different
from the substantive, by the introduction of the relative
and the ellipsis of the substantive verb, in the manner by
which the synonyms of Ptay have been quoted, as for example,
the adiantum album crispum alpinum of Schwenck-
feld being placed by Ray in his genus, Filix foemina, is
thus quoted in vol. ii. p. 16, Filix foemina quae (est) Adi-
" antum album, &c. By this means alone can the perma-