Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/406

This page has been validated.
376
GENERIC NAMES IN

ever, and the genus which bears it must have a new appellation. In like manner my own Humea, Exot. Bot. t. 1, has been called in France Calomeria after the present Emperor, by the help of a pun, though there has long been another genus Bonapartea, which last can possibly be admitted only in honour of the Empress, and not of her consort, who has no botanical pretensions. Our own beloved sovereign could derive no glory from the Georgia[1] of Ehrhart; but the Strelitzia of Aiton stands on the sure basis of botanical knowledge and zeal, to which I can bear ample and very disinterested testimony.

Linnæus, in his entertaining book Critica Botanica, p. 79 has in several instances drawn a fanciful analogy between botanists and their appropriate plants, thus—

Bauhinia, after the two distinguished brothers John and Caspar Bauhin, has a two-lobed or twin leaf.

Scheuchzeria, a grassy alpine plant, commemorates the two Scheuchzers, one of whom excelled in the knowledge of alpine productions, the other in that of grasses.

  1. Tetraphis of Hedwig and Engl. Bot. t. 1020.