VOL. Iv.] Systematic Botany. 375 
the plants do not vary too much from the species are considered 
the same and so named; if they deviate too much, then they 
are erected into new species, usually on the strength of a single 
specimen. The authorities put down what they consider specific 
characters and omit all mention of what does not strike their 
fancy as specific. Believing that brevity is the soul of this 
branch of Systematic Botany they write a few words, only a line 
or two if possible, and call it a concise description. The notes of 
the field botanist they usually have dismissed (till very recently) 
with a remark like this: ‘‘ Flowers said to be white, but they 
appear to be yellow.” If the field botanist has been so bold as 
to write out a full description of the real characters, the closet 
botanist will cut out all except those which strike his fancy and 
are found in the specimen before him, and will add such as he 
thinks have been overlooked by the field botanist. At last when 
the description is published the weary field botanist goes out into 
the home of the plants, where perhaps there are acres of them, and 
he finds that his description does not describe and is only an aggre- 
gation of meaningless words. If he becomes disgusted and writes 
back as I did once, complaining, he may get the reply which I 
received from one of the three great botanists who have recently 
passed away, saying: ‘‘I suppose that by this time you have 
learned that it is impossible to grow plants to fit the descriptions.” 
It struck me that it was about time to grow the descriptions to 
fit the plants. Of late this kind of thing has become a nuisance, 
and field botanists have taken to describing their own species. 
For a time certain drastic measures were employed to prevent it, 
but these having failed, the botanists are now appealed to not to 
publish till they have seen the allied types in the East, a thing 
which every western botanist agrees to most emphatically if by 
any means he can see the types, which is not often, for with ‘his 
field knowledge he could tell quickly what are valid, distinguish- 
ing characters in his proposed new species, while from the 
descriptions of old types alone no man could do more than guess 
what the real characters are in hundreds of species. 
The occasional republication of an old species by . western 
man is pointed to as ‘‘an exasperating blunder,” as ‘ madden- 
ing,” but, dear me, that does not begin to express our feelings 
