28 Rhodora [FEBRUARY 
Arbutus uva ursi L." which commonly has its few nutlets fused into 
1 stone. This publication of Desvaux's was obviously a hopeless 
piece of blundering, but, even if one can infer what he might have 
said if he had written otherwise, there is nothing in it to indicate the 
slightest tendency to separate Mairania from A rctostaphylos Adans. 
nor to treat Mairania or Arctostaphylos alpina as belonging to a 
separate genus from M. or A. Uva-ursi. 
But even if the chance (i. e. alphabetical) placing of M. alpina before 
M. Uva-ursi in Desvaux's ill-begotten enumeration of the two can possi- 
bly mean to followers of the * American" Code that Desvaux was thus 
setting up a genus Mairania including the Alpine Bearberry as opposed 
to the common lowland Bearberry, it is impossible to see how the 
" American" Code allows Mairania to be taken up in this sense on the 
basis of Desvaux's publication in 1813 when the name had already 
been used by Necker in 1790 for Uva Ursi of Tournefort; for there 
can be no question that Tournefort’s Uva Ursi was the common Bear- 
berry. Tournefort clearly indicated this when he wrote: "I know 
one species of Uva Ursi (Uvae Ursi speciem unicam novi)," and when 
he illustrated the fruit with 5 coherent nutlets.! 
Rehder & Wilson follow Niedenzu, in Engler, Bot. Jahrb. xi. 180 
(1889), in using for the Alpine Bearberry the name Arctous which 
was the name given by Gray (Synoptical Flora) to a section including 
Arctostaphylos alpina as contrasted with the other species. If the 
genus Arctous is to be maintained it should be under that name; but 
its claims to generic rank seem to the writer, as they have to many 
others, extremely trivial and such as even the most extreme devotees 
of change have not yet ventured to appl y to parallel cases in many other 
genera, such as Vaccinium, Ilex and Rubus. The fullest definitions of 
Arctous (Mairania Britton, not Necker) as opposed to Arctostaphylos 
(“ Uva-Ursi”) seem to be those of Drude in Engler’s Pflanzenfamilien 
and of Britton in Britton & Brown's Illustrated Flora; and, since these 
emphasize essentially the same points, the English descriptions are 
here quoted. 
ARCTOSTAPHYLOS. “Erect or spreading, low or tall shrubs (some western 
species small trees). Leaves alternate, petioled, firm or coriaceous, persistent, 
evergreen. Flowers small, nodding, pedicelled, white or pink, in terminal 
racemes, panicles or clusters. Clayx 4-5-parted, persistent. Corolla globose, 
ovoid, urceolate or oblong-campanulate, 4-5-lobed, the lobes recurved, im- 
! See Tourn. Inst. 598, t. 370 (1700). 
