Every exploring naturalist […] is all the time illustrating, in an openly reflective way, in his naming of species, the two principles which direct a great part of the world’s less conscious nomenclature. Having in his hands a new plant, he at once proceeds to classify it: that is to say, to determine of what current class-names it must swell the content […] But it has peculiarities which entitle it to a specific designation; and this must be gained by the other method: the nomenclator selects the quality which he will describe […].
- Whitney (1875), a pag.85