;<) ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [February 



has reached a point where the ordinary morphological charac- 

 ters no longer suffice to classify what we know or wish to know 

 about the plants themseKes." -i \Ve also feel warranted in 

 believing that hereafter physiological characters will assume 

 even a "'renter importance than at present in the character!/ 

 ation of species." 



Anyone who is familiar with the systematic literature of 

 botany knows how difficult it is to distinguish species even 

 among the higher forms of plants on morphological grounds 

 alone. The varieties of one botanist are apt to become the 

 species of anot her : while both species and genera are trans 

 ferred back and forth in a most astonishing manner. Dr. 

 Gray once expressed theopinion that not more than one-third 

 of the described species of oak were valid, and in one of his 

 letters writes that the asters threatened to reduce him to 

 blank despair. A well known authority in reviewing a recent 

 work on grasses declares that six or eight good and valid spe- 

 cies have been compressed into a single polymorphous one. 

 The fact is that if minute differences were to be noted ever\ 

 plant would represent a species. Something like this seems 

 really to have happened in the case of the genus Sphagnum in 

 regard to which a European bryologist remarks. SH 

 u Tot sped mina, <ii>l 



o 



01; Hvromsc orni >? It turns out that 

 A>lmi., ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS, October, 1893. is identic:) I with 

 Hypomtscophus, Ck\\./Ann. Ma.tr. X:i(. Hist., October, 1898. Dr. 

 Skinner cannot find out just w'.en the October ENTOMOI.IM.I. \i 

 NEWS appeared, but 1 e >tates that it "is usually m-iilcd on or before 

 t he last day of each month." Mc.-^rs. Taylor and KIMIUM^ inform 

 me that the October Annals and Mnir. of Xat. Hist, wa* issued to the 

 pulilic on September :ol li. at s.:{: i. in., which would be about ..;{( 

 a. m. in I'biladeljibia. Such are the facts, and they leave us -.till in 

 uncertainty. Unless more light is forthcoming, 1 am inclined to 

 favor the use of M>'>-(>i>lif>ii<x. as A.shmead desci'ibed three specie- 

 under it, while my Tfypomiscophits was based on a single species. 



T. D. A. COCKERELL. ' 



P. S. Mr. Aslimeid kindly informs m;- that his copy of KNTOMO- 

 LOGIGAL NEWS COUtLining Mixcniihfiuts w;i- reeei\-ed onthe mom 

 ing of the first of the month, and he re:id it at the l>ivikta>t table. 

 Lt must therefore li:i\c been mailed on September 30th, and owing 

 to the diilerence of longitude, the London publication has priority 

 of several hours. T. D. A. < '. 



