396 MR. C. €, LACAITA ON THE 
distinet perennial species. The opinions expressed by Boissier, Fl. Or. iv. 
p. 181, and his identification of O. Visianii with O. setosum Ledeb., conpled 
with the remark on p. 182, * O. echivide elatius, corolla longior magis exserta,” 
are in flat contradiction both with Javorka and with the Zürich authors. 
Then Brand in the latest edition of Koch’s ‘Synopsis’ takes a different line from’ 
any of the others. Most botanists have deserihed arenarium as haplotriehous ; 
the Zürich authors as almost so; but in many Hungarian examples obseurely 
stellate tubercles are discoverable on some of the leaves, consequently Javorka 
considers this species heterotrichous, placing it in a different section from the 
very close O. Visianit. A pretty kettle of fish !! 
Returning to echioides L. as the name for an asterotrichous species, it may 
be admitted that Linnæus, had he possessed sundry asterotrichous Onosmas 
such as true stellulatum, erectum, ete., would perhaps have lumped them 
together with Columna’s plant and with the above-mentioned specimen no. 5 
in a collective echioides a, whilst separating the haplotrichous series 8. This 
is the procedure which appeals to the school of which Dr. Briquet is so 
distinguished an ornament, and which the Zürich authors appear to follow, 
requiring a collective name forall closely-related asterotrichous species. The 
objection to the method in this case is that, in the absence of a complete 
monograph of the genus, it cannot be scientifically carried out without the 
study of very numerous allied Asiatic forms, which are by no means the same 
as the European. ‘This study has not been facilitated by the rather reckless 
determination as echioides or as stellulatum or tauricum of many specimens 
from Asia Minor to Afghanistan and the western Himalaya. It has certainly 
not been successful as adopted by Boissier in the * Flora Orientalis? for the 
group he collects under the name stellulatum, the true stellulatum Waldst. 
et Kit. being a remarkably definite entity with a very limited area, chiefly 
Croatian. The Ziirich authors have preferred the name tauricum Willd. for 
a similar purpose, as being six years earlier than stellulatum, ignoring the 
material differences that exist between true tauricum, stellulatum, and echioides 
(which they actually call echioides Wettst. non L.! !). 
We must differ toto cwlo; if there must be a “species cloaca ” it should 
bear the Linnean name echioides and no other, though not in the more precise 
sense that I have advocated above. The haplotrichous series must be left to 
find some other generalized appellation, 
THE ONOSMAS OF SIBTHORP. 
Sir J. E. Smith has made a terrible hash of the Onosmas collected by Sib- 
thorp. Five species are mentioned in the * Prodromus? (1806), of which 
only three reappear with figures in the * Flora Greeea.” The five are :— 
No. 421. O. orientalis with no diagnosis or figure ; said to grow “in insulæ 
Cypri campestribus ; Sibth. MSS.," with the local name Evol pop Bos 
