The Botanical Gazette Volume 13 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 edition. Excerpt: ...Now, in this case, I am no authority for the transfer, and am not the author of Dim/rum Menziexii; I am simply blindly following Bentham's lead, and expressing in words what he had previously said in fact. It appears to me a worse falsification of the fact to cite "N. or M." as authority in this case than it is of the record to cite " Benth. fc Hook.," for it is denying that they made a Disporum of Prosartes Menziisii. As truly as the whole must include all its parts, and as the general also includes the particular, so truly did they make a Disjxirum Menziesii of Prosartes Menziesii when they said that Prx-sartes belonged in Disp/rum. It makes no difference that there might be already a D. Menziesii, and that there should not be two species of the same name in a genus, for there are actual cases of that very thing; nor does it make any difference what other questions there may be as to validity of species, correctness of nomenclature, or whatever else. All these questions can remain in abeyance as well under Dispmimm under Prusartes, the one statement holding good that all the known and reputed species of Prosartes, such as they are, are now, in the judgment of Benth. fc Hook., species of Disporum, subject to the same criticism in that genus as in the other. Suppose, now, that, instead of adopting their conclusion. I were here combating it and refusing to accept it, but had occasion in the course of my article to name the species as if under Disporum. According to this rule I must still be cited as authority for the species just the same. Absurdity in this matter could not easily go much further, yet this does not seem to me very much more absurd than the other. To take another example, Benth. & Hook, transferred...