42 7 Rhodora [Marcu 
Gray’s New Manual of 1908 the species was taken over, unchanged, 
except in a few details of description, from Watson and Coulter’s 
edition; in the new edition of the Illustrated Flora there was no change 
from the first edition. In the latest publication where the species is 
cited, Norman Taylor’s Flora of the Vicinity of New York, the occur- 
rence is summarized thus: “ Known in N. Am. only from a swamp in 
Delaware Co., Pa. and as reported also from Chester Co.” 
Our American sedge flora is so characteristically made up of indige- 
nous species that there is a rather added attraction in introductions 
in this group. Probably no sedge, of the comparatively few foreign 
species accredited to this country, is less well known to American 
collectors than Scirpus mucronatus; yet for more than twenty-five 
years it has been a familiar name in all our manuals of the plants of 
the northeastern United States, nor has it ever failed to receive a place 
in various local floras covering southeastern Pennsylvania. Further- 
more it has been over fifty years since this plant was first collected 
and almost equally long apparently since it was brought to the atten- 
tion of the foremost botanists of the United States. But the point of 
chiefest interest to be noted is that all the material, with apparently 
a single exception, dates from the year of the original discovery, or a 
very few years later. 
It will be recalled that species, especially introductions, which hold 
places in our manuals and floras upon the basis of old collections or 
records, coupled with little or no present day evidence, ofttimes prove 
to be worthy of critical attention. The reputed occurrence in America 
of Scirpus mucronatus is a case in point. 
Unsatisfactory results, in investigating questionable records, seem 
to be the general rule: sometimes, in the absence of a substantiating 
specimen, an expression of opinion is the best that can be done; at 
other times even an apparently verifying specimen may leave one 
unconvinced. A specimen which solves the problem suggested by a 
record is unhappily none too common, but fortunately in the present 
case the evidence is clear and, moreover, ample. 
The early history of this record to be gleaned from labels and 
notes accompanying the original specimens proves to be rather inter- 
esting, at least from a human standpoint, in showing through what 
vicissitudes a debatable record may pass. That, in its later history, 
in a succeeding generation of botanists, it may still rise to full credence 
and become traditionally authentic, is no less interesting as a human 
document. 
