1916] Sargent,— The Name of the Red Oak 47 



Mexican species by Humboldt & Bonpland. This fact was recognized 

 in the first English translation' of a part of Michaux's hook and the 

 name Quercus borealis was there substituted for it. Although the facl 

 is not stated very clearly, this change was evidently made or suggested 

 by Michaux himself, for the translator says, — "This (the name 

 ambigua) which I have adopted in the French edition, circumstances 

 have compelled me to change; MM™. Humboldt & Bonpland having 

 previously applied it to an Oak of New Spain. 1 have therefore 

 substituted the name borealis, as it grows further to the north than 

 any of the Oaks of North America." It is probably right, therefore, 

 to credit Michaux fils with the combination Quercus borealis which 

 should be adopted for the Red Oak species, for although Humboldt & 

 Bonpland's Quercus ambigua is now considered a synonym of another 

 species it is not impossible, judging from their plate in the Plantar 

 Aequinoctiales, that with fuller knowledge of the Mexican Oaks than 

 we now possess it will be shown that it is a distinct species. 



Quercus borealis being used as the name for the Red Oak, it is 

 desirable to distinguish by a varietal name the tree with the large 

 acorns and the broad shallow cups, that is the Red Oak, as all modern 

 authors have understood it. There were two varietal names given 

 to this tree in 17S5, 2 Marshall's var. maxima and Lamarck's var. 



1 This first English translation of a part of the younger Michaux's llisloire des arbret forts- 

 tieres de I'Amerique seplentrionale appears to be little known. It is not found in the catalogues 

 of the libraries of the British Museum or in that of the Boyal Gardens at hew. Pritzel describes 

 the first English edition of the work as l>eiug in four volumes, giving the dale of publication 

 as 1817-1819, and it is possible therefore that he considered this earlier translation as a tirsl 

 volume of Hillhouse's English edition, which is really in three volumes. It is an octavo volume 

 of two hundred and sixty-eight pages without illustrations and is devoted entirely to the 

 Oaks. The title-page differs from that of the Hillhouse edition only in the omission of the 

 names of several scientific societies following the name of Michaux, in the difference of the 

 date of publication which is 1817, the date of Hillhouse's edition being 1819, and in tin- place 

 of publication which, although the book was printed in Paris, is given as Philadelphia where 

 it was sold by Thomas Oobson-Solomon Conrad. Both of these editions were printed in Paris 

 by C. D'Hautel. but the names of the booksellers are omitted from the title-page of the Hillhouse 

 edition. There is a preface by Hillhouse to his edition dated Paris 1819, but there is no preface 

 to this 1817 edition, and the English translation of Michaux's introduction has an entirely 

 different phraseology in these two editions. I have not been able to discover the name of the 

 translator of the 1817 fragment which was probably prepared in Paris anil then abandoned 

 on account of the appearance of the Hillhouse translation. Thai it was not made by Mill- 

 house would seem to l>c shown by the fact that, although he placed the name of "borealis" at 

 the head of the article on the Gray Oak he failed to change "ambigua" to "boreaiit" in the 

 hotly of the article and made no reference to the reason for the change of name given in the 

 1817 edition. The same mistake occurs also in J. J. Smith's Philadelphia edition of 1865. 



2 The date on the title-page of the first volume of the Kncychpedie Mithodique is 1783, but it 

 is stated in the Catalogue of the Library of the British Museum thai this volume was issued in 

 two parts and that the second part, which must have contained the article on the Oaks, did not 

 appear until 1785. 



