vot. tv.] &. L. Greene versus Asa Gray. 289 
article Dr. N. L. Britton was applied to for some examples of 
Mr. Greene’s Caryophyllaceze, but very shortly after the letter 
was dispatched a fragment of Paronychia pusilla reached the 
writer from another source, and it was identifiable at a glance. 
Some time afterwards, and when the correction was already 
printed, Dr. Britton replied to my letter by saying that the plant 
in question was the old Herniaria cinerea of Linnzeus, and that 
he had made a note to that effect for publication. The remarks 
of Mr. Greene on Convolvulus arvensis and Californica, for which, 
according to his own account, he has rifled the private letters of 
Dr. Gray, show a not entirely unexpected moral laxity, and a 
recklessness of consequences quite out of keeping with his char- 
acter and which can only be accounted for by his forgetfulness of 
the old proverb concerning the danger of stone-throwing by one 
whose house is so roofed and walled and even floored by glass. 
The remarks made by Mr. Greene about his discovery 
during the lifetime of the latter, of Dr. Gray’s ‘‘inexcusable’’ 
error in transferring Dr. Kellogg’s Hedeoma purpurea to Micro- 
meria and his own magnanimity in shielding’him from the 
‘humiliating ’ knowledge give a pleasant surprise to those who 
were cognizant of the truly ecclesiastical hatred which he felt for 
Gray in the last three years of his life. This kind of statement 
should, however, be made with much caution and a due regard to 
the danger of the existence of proof that the ‘‘discovery’’ was 
made at a much later date. Besides, though it is extremely 
painful to be obliged to demolish another of Mr. Greene's “ facts,” 
Micromeria purpurea is not *Mentha Pulegium as he affirms. If 
he has a‘specimen of the latter—it is not at all so common in 
California as he would have us believe—one of his students will 
be able to tell him that Mentha Pulegium has the throat of the 
calyx closed by a villous ring and belongs to a different section 
from Mentha Canadensis. Dr. Kellogg in the original descrip- 
tion of Hedeoma ? purpurea} says “ throat naked. * * * This 
*This plant has been identified in a paper on the ‘‘Flora of Bouldin 
Island,” Zoe, iv, 211-218. Reprint issued August 22, 1893. Dr, -B.ibs 
Robinson of the Gray Herbarium concurring after comparison of abundant 
material from the type locality, sent to him in 1892. 
+Proc. Cal. Acad. v. 52. 
