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[PROC. ROY. SOC. VICTORIA, 20 (N.S.), PT. II., 1907.]

ART. XI.—Contributions to the Flora of Australia,
No. 7.1

BY ALFRED J. EWART, D.Sc., Ph.D., F.L.S.,

Government Botanist and Professor of Botany
at the Melbourne University.

[Read 14th November, 1907.]

Latin in Systematic Botany.

At the last Botanical Congress, held at Vienna in 1905, on the
whole a salutary check was administered to the objectionable
tendencies of modern systematists in certain quarters, especially
as regards frivolous changes of name, and it is, in fact, a matter
of regret that the list of protected names was not greatly increased.
On the other hand, it is impossible to follow Mr.
Maiden2 when he states that botanists are as bound by these laws
as by those of their own country, and must follow these laws
whether they approve of them or not. For this to be requisite the
Congress would need to be a really representative one, to which all
botanists sent elected representatives. At present it is a fortuitous
concourse almost soley of systematists, among whom the local
interests of the country in which the Congress is held are always
unduly strongly reprensented. So far as I am aware, botanists
from the south of the Equator were entirely unrepresented, and
plant physiologists and anatomists were conspicuous by their
absence. Yet the man who has intimately investigated the
structure and properties of a plant has a greater claim to
decide that its name shall not be altered than the systematist
whose interest in the plant largely ceases as soon as it is
labelled, and is often only revived when a chance of relabelling it
occurs.

1 No. 6 in Proc. Roy. Soc. Vict, 1907, vol. 20, p. 76.
2 Jour. Roy. Soc. N.S. Wales, vol. xl., 1906, p. 74.