Generic Names Published in Salisbury's Reviews of Robert Brown's Works Author(s): D. J. Mabberley Source: Taxon, Vol. 29, No. 5/6 (Nov., 1980), pp. 597-606 Published by: International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1220331 . Accessed: 15/09/2011 02:33 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Taxon. http://www.jstor.org TAXON 29(5/6):597-606. NOVEMBER1980 GENERIC NAMES PUBLISHED IN SALISBURY'S REVIEWS OF ROBERT BROWN'S WORKS D. J. Mabberley' Summary Generic names validly publishedin the Monthly review by Salisburyare identified, as are other overlooked names publishedby him elsewhere. Kunzea Rchb. (Myrtaceae)should be conserved againstTillospermum Salisb. Three of Salisbury'sgeneric names in currentuse are antedatedby others. It is pointedout thatHomoglossum is antedatedby Petamenes [Salisb.ex] J. W. Loud. (Iridaceae)and that Eurycles is a synonym of Proiphys Herb. (Amaryllidaceae), while Dipidax gives way to Onixotis Raf. (Liliaceae);the four necessary new combinationsare made. Appendedis a list of 64 overlooked names of tropicaland subtropicalplants of the Old World, though some names referableto South AfricanAloe and Erica spp. remainobscure. Introduction In August 1818, Robert Brown, then Librarian both to the Linnean Society and to Sir Joseph Banks, wrote to the Linnean's President, Sir James Edward Smith, "In the last No. of the Monthly Review you will find a remarkable botanical article, of which you will be at no loss to discover the author" (Sm. Corr. 2: 163 at Linnean Society). In the issue for July 1818 (vol. 86: 298-305) is a spiteful anonymous review of Brown's account of the plants collected on the disastrous Congo expedition led by Tuckey. As is obvious from its contents, and as is confirmed by the copy in the Bodleian Library, annotated 'R.A.S... .. y' by George Edward Griffiths (d. 1829), son of the Monthly review's founder, Ralph Griffiths (1720-1803), the author was Richard Anthony Salisbury (1761-1829). Salisbury criticizes Brown's prolixity, his overuse of the word 'remarkable' and his comments on the work of Cassini and others. Further, he notes, "The author [Brown] of this communication we have, on a former occasion, designated the most learned botanist living; and we say learned because all his works prove that indefatigable labour, joined to the unparalleled and we may add exclusive advantages which he enjoys as successor to Dryander in the Banksian Library, have enabled him to acquire so much knowledge, rather than any predilection for botany. ... In so extensive a field as this [the recognition of 'Natural Orders'] . a great deal of drudgery must be performed, to which labour- ers [unlike Brown] of the very highest talents will never submit"! The relationship between Salisbury and Brown had soured long before this, as I have tried to show in my forthcoming Jlpiter botanicus--Robert Brown of the British Museum, partly due to Salisbury's use of Brown's material on Proteaceae and other plants in his own publications and partly to the relationship between Salisbury and Smith, which began to deteriorate at the beginning of the century. Gone were the days when Smith had toppled Linnaeus's Ginkgo to make way for his Salisbltria, "named in honour of Richard Anthony Salisbury, Esq., F.R.S. and F.L.S. of whose acuteness and inde- fatigable zeal in the service of botany no testimony is necessary in this society, nor in any place which his writings have reached" (Trans. Linn. Soc. 3: 330, 1797). By April Departmentsof Botany and Forestry, Universityof Oxford, England. NOVEMBER 1980 597 1807 (Sm./McL. Corr.: 41 at Linnean Society), Smith was writing to the Society's secretary, Alexander MacLeay, "I wonder how some of Salisbury's trash got admit- ted [to the Transactions of the Linnean Society] " and they seemed to be taking every opportunity to slight one another in print as well as in correspondence. It appears that, in 1802, Salisbury had attempted to lead astray Smith's protege, William (later the Reverend William) Drake, then just sixteen years old, by offering to take him to see "a girl of his acquaintance in London," explaining that "it would be good for him, manly &c &c." (Banks Corr. 2: 324 at Kew). The ingenuous Drake sought the prim Smith's permission for the proposed excursion, to Salisbury's em- barrassment. Further, Smith disapproved of the way Salisbury had declared himself a bankrupt in order to regain possession of his estates in Yorkshire and even hinted that Salisbury's benefactrice, whose name Salisbury had taken, might be a fiction. The difference in their characters overcame their common link of botany and, despite Banks's effort to mediate, the rift between them widened, as Salisbury strengthened his views on the Natural System and Smith maintained the Linnaean System until more should be known, when a possibly more stable arrangement might be con- structed. Salisbury attacked Smith's copying of Linnaeus's descriptions in his Eng- lis/ botany and Smith was quick to deny this. Salisbury printed a pamphlet, Generic characters in the English botany, which he presented to the Society on 4 March 1806 (General Minute Book 2: 150). It caused uproar and the two were never reconciled, their arguments becoming so public that by February 1808, Samuel Frederick Gray was writing in his Botanical Report in the Monthly magazine, "Unfortunately for the science, Dr. Smith and Mr. Salisbury after professing the most inviolate friendship, for several years, have fallen out, are become such inveterate enemies, that while the one refuses to acknowledge even honours received from the hands of the other, the latter has declared war against the Linnaean System, apparently for no other reason, but through it, to wound the sides of his former friend, the professed admirer and champion of that system." In reply Smith wrote in the April issue that he and Salisbury had had no [botanicall quarrel before 1805, but when Salisbury tried to weigh in with a vindication of his views the editor wrote on 22 April 1808 (Letter with Misc. Salisbury MSS at British Museum (Natural History)): "Sir, I returnto you the enclosed paperbecause I shouldconsider it indecorousto give place in the MonthlyMagazine to so manyallegations & insinuationsrelative to a Gentlemanwhose charac- ter is generally respected & because I do not consider it necessary to impartany defence of yours, except in regardto the points relativeto which you feel yourself attacked. If the controversialistswho write in a periodicalwork were to reply to one allegationby retortingothers of differentkinds, the literaryJournals would be filled with little besides attack & defence & the Magazineswould become as contemptiblefrom their disregardof good man- ners as the reviews, which of late yours have outragedpublic decency by the personalrancour & privatemalice in whichtheir anotnymous writers indulge. Criticism has in consequencelost its respectability& utility & the magazineswould share the fate of the reviews if they were to pursue the same dishonourable course. I am anxious that my magazine should be the medium of correspondence & discussion among men of Letters, but I can never consent that it should become a sort of arena in which they should worry each other for the amusementof Bystanders. As far as you have been attacked by the worthy President, I shall cheerfully admit your reply, but as I do not wish to lengthen the controversy, I hope you will strictly confine yourself to these points. I am, Sir, Your Obdt Svt. R. Phillips Bridge Street April 22 1808" 598 TAXON VOLUME 29 Undeterred, Salisbury published his sally as a pamphlet in two editions, A letter to the editor of the Monthly Magazine, dated 10 April 1808 (copies at Linn. Soc. and at Kew) making their personal as well as botanical differences public. Smith had much to lose if the Linnaean System was dropped and his cautious approach to the Natural System was perhaps scarcely impartial. Nevertheless, the Natural System was firmly launched in France and Brown had set the seal on it in Britain with his Prodromius florae novae liollandiae et insulae van Diemen (1810). The Transactions were full of papers dealing with the 'new' system, but despite their ideological differences Brown and Smith got on reasonably well. Salisbury still frequented Banks's Library and, by the time of Banks's death in 1820, was still on good terms with John Lindley and William Herbert at least (Lindley Letters L-Z, Kew). For Smith he had become a bogeyman, so that as late as 1821, Smith was writing to Brown (10 i 1821, British Museum (Natural History)) of an article in Thomson's Annals of philosophy, where the Natural System was being promoted by Gray, "Who is Sam.1 Fred.k Gray Esqr? It must be R A (lie)S Esq. I could swear to the passage in Thompson's [sic] Annals v. 16 p. 130." In fact, Gray had criticized Salisbury's work in Hooker's Paradisiis londinensis, where many of his attacks including that on English botany had ap- peared, noting (Monthly magazine 23: 618, 1807), that Salisbury, "deaf to all remon- strances against the continual changing of names, never adopts such as do not accord with his own principles of nomenclature." Further, he wrote a laudatory account of Brown's Prodromiis, the only English review of the work, in the Monthly magazine and again praised it there in 1814 (Britten, 1922).