Bicknell : Further Notes on the Agrimonies 515 



Michau 



inal description of the plant and on one of the specimens on the 

 existing sheet of A. striata in the Michaux herbarium. Of the 

 original description it may at once be said that it applies better to 

 A. Brittoniana than to any other one of our species. A moment's 

 thought, however, will show that this essential agreement is in 

 itself quite inconclusive. If there were no such plant as A. Brit- 

 toniana the description would unquestionably be held to apply 

 with sufficient exactness to several of our species and, as a matter 

 of fact, was so held during the long period within which A. 

 Brittoniana remained undistinguished. The description is, in fact, 

 almost generic, and specimens of A. hirsuta (Muhl.), A. glabra 

 (Muhl.) and A. mollis Britton may be compared character by 

 character with the description -and be found to come sufficiently 

 within it. It cannot be claimed therefore that 

 tion is in itself so thorough-going as to exclude all but a single 

 one of several critically similar species. But even assuming that 

 it was principally derived from a specimen of the plant now known 

 as A. Brittoniana, Michaux's name would still be unavailable. 



The existing sheet of A. striata in the Michaux herbarium at 

 Paris shows that the species as originally put forth was a com- 

 posite one. Upon the sheet are two' distinct plants both labeled A. 

 striata, one being A. Brittoniana, the other A. glabra (Muhl.). It 

 is, of course, well-established practice that the first critical student 

 of a mixed species has the privilege of restricting the original 

 name and applying it definitively to either of the two or more 

 component plants. In this case of the composite A. striata Michx. 

 this was long ago done, and in no uncertain way, by Dr. Gray. 

 The name A. striata was thus carefully limited by him to that part 

 of the original A. striata later distinguished by Muhlenberg as A. 

 Eupatoria glabra. I cannot see how this long-standing disposition 

 of the matter can now be reversed, even though the balance of 

 probabilities— certainties in this case are now quite beyond our 

 reach — should favor the view that, possibly with better reason, 

 Dr. Gray might have restricted the name A. striata to that one of 

 the component specimens other than the one he chose. For his 

 own reasons which may well have been, and doubtless were, bet- 

 ter than we can now know, he did so limit the name, at his right 

 was, and in unmistakable terms. Other material of which we now 



