4 Rhodora [JANUARY 
these respects it approaches, V. cucu//ata,— so much so that on my 
first acquaintance with the plant in August, 1903, I queried if it 
might not be a hybrid between this and 7. affinis which were grow- 
ing with it. However, the violet color of the petals, the obtuse 
sepals, the constant green of the capsules and the absence of all 
indications of sterility convinced me during the past season that the 
plant was a valid species, answering well to the description of 7. 
vagula, Greene (Pitt. iv. 67). As no type of this species was extant, 
one of the chief objects of a visit to Ottawa last September was to 
observe this plant in the original station. Under the courteous 
guidance of Dr. James Fletcher this was accomplished. The station 
is a flat, boggy “ beaver-meadow ” across the Ottawa River in Hull, 
Quebec, and the plant has proved to be identical with those from 
Vermont and Maine. 
But the species is found to extend across the Dominion of Canada 
from Eastern Quebec at least to the Rocky Mountains, Mr. Fernald 
collected it the past summer at seven stations along various rivers of 
the Gaspé Peninsula. Mr. A. B. Klugh has sent it to me from near 
Guelph in western Ontario, In the Gray Herbarium there are 
specimens from Saskatchewan and from Assiniboia; and in the 
National Herbarium a fine sheet from Banff, Alberta, showing the 
plant both in petaliferous flower and in its late summer stages with 
characteristic leaves and fruit. Furthermore, the species is found to 
extend southward in the Rocky Mountain region at least into Colo- 
rado. The large herbaria at Washington, New York and Cambridge 
show that the plant is common in all the mountainous States of the 
northwest, the specimens collected of late years passing usually 
under the name of F. cognata, Greene, or V. nephrophylla, Greene. 
Through the great kindness of Professor Greene the type speci- 
mens of these two species have been sent me for study. They 
were collected by Professor Greene himself in the summer of 1896, 
— V. nephrophylla at Cimarron River in western Colorado, and PV, 
cognata at Dale Creek, about 200 miles to the northeast, on the 
southern borders of Wyoming. The latter was in the advanced 
stages of petaliferous flowering, the thirteen plants preserved show- 
ing eight cleistogamous ovoid flowers on slender ascending or hori- 
zontal peduncles 2-4 cm. long. The petals are all more or less hairy ; 
the sepals ovate or oblong, obtuse; the later leaves, cordate, obtuse, 
obscurely crenate, glabrous. In all these characters the plants closely 
resemble the eastern specimens collected at that stage of growth. 
