182 Botanical Nomenclature. _ [ZOE 
Cascade Falls where it comes leaping and rolling off the granite 
boulders to the river, the ideal home of the dipper. 
The California creeper was seen on two occasions on cedar 
trees, 
Slender-billed nuthatches were seen in white oaks once, but 
no individuals of Sztta canadensis. 
The mountain chickadee (Parus gambeli) was seen on one 
occasion while passing through a mass of firs at summit of 
Glacier Point. The surrounding conditions were such that I 
expected to find it a common bird. 
The whistling notes of a pallid wren-tit (Chamea fasciata 
henshaw?t) were heard in a manzanita thicket half way up to 
Glacier Point. 
A ruby-crowned wren was seen in a young fir tree near our 
camp at Bridal Veil Fall. : 
Townsend’s solitaire was twice seen and a specimen taken 
at Diamond Cascades below the Vernal Falls. 
The jewel of all the high Sierra singers is the western robin 
(Merula migratoria propingua). It perches at the top of a pine 
or fir and sings till the setting sun is down, breaking forth now 
and then with a few notes till night begins. At first break of 
morning light, about three o’clock, his song is in greatest per- 
fection; after greeting the day he is then quiet excepting a short 
low bar of love to his nesting mate. Full-grown young with 
spotted plumage were about our camp all the time. 
BOTANICAL NOMENCLATURE. 
BY KATHARINE BRANDEGEE. 
It must be confessed that the present state of nomenclature 
is hardly an encouragement to those attempting to reform it. 
Almost every author of a systematic treatise has a system of his 
own, differing more or less from that of his neighbor, and in too 
many cases his meaning can only be made out by the average 
botanist through the quoted ‘‘synonymy.”’ This state of things 
not only furnishes the ‘‘ biological” botanist with his keenest 
weapons against systematic work but lessens to a marked degree 
