400 MR. C. C. LACAITA : A REVISION OF 
calycis non subulatze Æ. vulgaris nec calyce longiores E. eretici”? The remark 
about the bracts agrees with the herbarium and excludes Æ. angustifolium. 
The difficulty is the phrase * nec breviores Æ. eretici”? There must be some 
slip of the pen or of the printer. The most naiural interpretation of the 
words is “not shortish as those of Æ. creticum”*. But that would be in 
direct conflict with fact and with the * corollis maximis ” of Hort. Ups. We 
should have to suppose that his thoughts had shifted to X. creticum angusti- 
folium, for its corollas are smaller than those of 77. vulgare and much smaller 
than in Æ. plantagineum. But this supposition does not seem compatible 
with the immediately following remark about the bracts. The only alterna- 
tive is to suppose either that cretici is a misprint for cretico, or that the word 
ilis has dropped out after breviores, and to interpret “not shorter than 
E. creticum” or “ not shorter than those of X. ereticum." This would make 
good sense and fit the facts, but it would put a great strain on the words as 
they stand. 
Lastly, in Mant. p. 334 (1771), Linnæus added “ E. eretieum ; corolla 
saturate rubra, tubo calycibus breviore. Filamenta apice parum pilosa.’ The 
hairy filaments exelude angustifolium in which they are glabrous, but are 
most characteristic of australe and of its large-flowered form. The hairs can 
be seen in the herbarium specimen, of which also the corollas look as if they 
had been “saturate rubr," judging by their present dull dark reddish 
appearance. The phrase “tubo calycibus breviore," however, presents a 
slight difficulty, as it does not seem compatible with “ corollis maximis," Tt 
may be meant only to indicate that the calyx-segments are remarkably long, 
as indeed they are in grandiflorum and in the herbarium specimen f. 
Can we be surprised that, after Linneeus had so hopelessly mixed up two 
species which bis predecessors had kept distinct, his followers should have 
found themselves perplexed? It would be sheer waste of paper to go 
through all the ways in which the name creticum has been used subsequently ; 
de Coincy calls it “Vinévitable creticum que tous les anciens botanistes ne 
manquaient pas d'appliquer à tous les Echium qu'ils ne savaient pas nommer." 
It will be enough to say that the creticum of Poiret i, of Lehmann, and of 
* Is it possible that these words may have led Sibthorp, and consequently Smith, to apply 
the name ereticum to E. parviflorum, Moench ? 
T The way in which authors speak of the corolla tube being longer or shorter than that 
of the calyx in this genus is very vague, as they do not define the point at which they con- 
sider the tube of the corolla to end and the limb to begin. As a rule, there is no marked 
separation. 
1 Poiret, Diet. Encyc. viii. p. 671, makes two varieties of Æ. creticum, referable respec- 
tively to E. angustifolium, Mill, and to E. sericeum, Vahl, wrongly quoting (together with 
sundry other misapplied synonyms) Æ. ereticum latifolium rubrum, Tourn., for the first, and 
E. creticum angustifolium rubrum, Tourn., for the second, with the observation, * La 
première recueillie en Syrie par M. de Labillardiére, est bien celle de Tournefort, comparée 
avec son herbier, et la seconde celle de Forskal. V. s. in herb. Desfont." "This statement is 
criticised as follows by Gay in a note in his herbarium: “ Poiret a décrit son creficum sur 
deux échantillons conservés dans l'herbier Desfontaines et rapportós de Syrie par Labillar- 
