54 Rhodora [Marcu 
the plants concerned were only forms of a single species, C. myriophylla. 
Eaton ultimately adopted the same view. 
But Stout proved worthy of his name. Having convinced himself 
that he was right, he refused to yield to any array of authority, how- 
ever distinguished. “I am a very wicked man” he wrote to Daven- 
port, “and do not care a fig for labels when the plants confute them, 
even though they come from Kew. You must know that I recd a 
serious shock when I found there was no botanical Pope &, in con- 
sequence, have become a monstrous botanical skeptic . . . I 
think I am right in listening to the plants first & with confidence, to 
authorities next & always more or less doubtingly." He maintained 
his position vigorously through a long epistolary argument with Daven- 
port, which he closed at last, in June, 1880, with a bit of half-serious 
extravagance and a wholly serious resolve. “Throwing our scaly 
Cheilanthes into myriophylla seems to me very like throwing scientific 
botany to the four winds. Apply a similar scale of reduction to the 
3000 ferns and what would be left? A few groups, divisions and sub- 
divisions of genera. Specific lines would be practically abandoned. 
What is the use, then, of vexing ourselves about nice points of specific 
distinction? Let us call all the plants greens & make a salad of them. 
‘Better is a dinner of herbs’ than scientific botany gone daft 
Still I am ready to study these Cheilanthes all over again when I can 
get sufficient fresh material . . . I cannot differ as I do from all 
authorities without being much concerned lest it is I who have gone 
daft." 
Between June, 1880, and March, 1883, before this re-examination 
could be undertaken, Stout died. In the latter year Davenport 
began an article expounding his own views; the half-finished manu- 
script is among his papers. With it have lain, unknown to everyone, 
the letters of Stout which set forth his treatment. 'That it was not 
he who was "daft" has remained for Dr. Mason to prove. 
There is nothing to indicate that Stout had had previous experience 
in taxonomic work. He saw only scanty material—two sheets of 
Cheilanthes Wootoni and so little of C. intertexta that he was not sure 
of its status, though he thought it distinct. It is extraordinary that 
under such circumstances he should have struck out on a line of his 
own, at variancé with the prevailing taxonomic ideas of his day, 
and should have produced a revision of a difficult (though small) 
group so good that after forty years and the accumulation of much 
