VOL. I. | _ Nomenclature and its Amenities. 275 
Region of Baja California, growing along the streams and following 
them into the cafions well down toward the warm lowlands. Young 
trees, about thirty feet high, have a smooth light-colored bark simi- 
lar to that of the aspen, but that of the large ones is very rough. 
At high elevations (5,000 feet), and growing in cool rocky gulches, 
it is not more than twenty feet high. At lower altitudes it becomes 
a large tree nearly one hundred feet high, and is a favorite support 
for the wild grapevines. The very young leaves are tawny-tomen- 
tose, and the pubescence is still to be seen upon the old leaves after 
they have fallen from the tree. The wood is of light reddish color 
and is used for making furniture. 
This cottonwood is known by the name ‘‘guerigo”’ to the in- 
habitants, who distinguish it from the common one of the fields and 
gardens, called by them ‘‘alamo.” The leaves and flowers appear 
in February, and in October all have fallen, a season of growth 
usual in Alta California, but very different from the ordinary habit 
of the plants of the Cape Region of Baja California, where most of 
the vegetation comes forward with the summer and fall rains at the 
time when the cottonwoods are losing their leaves and appear to be 
preparing for a winter, which however never comes. The contrast 
between a flora dying and a flora coming into life at the same time, 
in the same place, is strange and interesting. Associated with the 
cottonwood in locality and in its habit of coming forward with the 
new year, are Arbutus, Rubus, Ribes, Gilia, Lupinus, Heteromeles, 
Prunus, Vitis, etc., although plants belonging to northern genera do 
not always belong to the flowers that bloom in the spring. 
ce 
NOMENCLATURE AND ITS AMENITIES. 
BY H. W. HARKNESS. 
A rather acrimonious discussion has been going on recently 
between James Britten, editor of the London Journal of Botany, and 
N. L. Britton, editor of the Bulletin of the Torrey Club, anent the 
respective claims of Z77ssa and Buda to recognition in place of Lep- 
igonum or Spergularia. 
It seems to me that, in this instance at least, the editor of the 
Torrey Bulletin has the best of the argument. Priority, in all the 
walks of life, is reckoned quite as often by place as by time, and the 
