On the Alum Bay Flora

Abstract

IN the list of fossils appended to the paper upon the Alum Bay flora, brought before the Royal Society by Baron von Ettingshauseu and reported in NATURE, vol. xxi. p. 555, the new species have Ett. and Gard. attached to them, implying that Ettingshausen and myself are their authors. It is only fair to Ettingshausan to state that I had no share in making the determinations, and to myself, that I accept them simply as provisional. Associated as he is with me in the work upon the British eocene floras, he felt that he could hardly publish preliminary work connected with it in any other way. I completely disagree with him, however, as to the utility of publishing new specific names unaccompanied by drawings or descriptions of any kind, and think that a simple list of genera, with the number of new species in each, would have been unattended with any inconvenience. He appears to me to attach altogether undue weight to mere priority in nomenclature, and the existence of such provisional lists, far from aiding research, must prove a serious difficulty to our fellow workers. In the highly probable event of an author being unable to come from some distant country to examine the specimens themselves, is he, for instance, to forbear naming every undescribed species of such common Tertiary genera as Ficus, of which eight new and unpublished species are in the list, of Celastrus, of which there are five, or of any other of the some fifty genera containing new specific names? He could not safely name even any indeterminable leaf or fruit, for fear it might be one of the long list of Phyllites or Carpolithes for which Ettingshausen has devised specific names.