THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 51 



flower-lovers who otherwise might be "led far afield by the 

 singularly erroneous article.." 



His long and witty letter, explaining just why there can 

 be no such thing as a l)lue dandelion, unfortunately did not 

 explain much, for it consisted almost entirely of quotations 

 t'rum my own essay, with sarcastic comments thereon. Not 

 then knowing his profession, I could not surmise the real 

 reason for his spirited attack. Nevertheless one sentence of 

 his gave me an opening. He said : "There comes to mind 

 the indignant conclusion of the Irishman at first sight of a 

 hippopotamus: 'There aint no such animal'." 



I should have been a poor swordsman indeed (or rather, 

 penman) to have missed such an opening, so I replied: 



"Your quotation is singularly apt, for you will remem- 

 ber that there actual!}- is such an animal as a hippopotamus, 

 in spite (.)f the Irishman's indignant conclusion. By the same 

 token, tiiere actually is such a flower as the blue dandelion, 

 in spite of your indignant conclusion. 



"By the way, speaking of animals, just how many cjuills 

 does it take to make a porcupine ? I note that you state that 

 my article 'would pass for a porcupine if errors were quills': 

 and vet vou cite merelv two alleged errors: namelv, the lilv- 

 like leaves and the hiennial habit of the blue dandelion. But 

 probably you do not intend to be taken- literally, although 

 requiring a most strict literality of me." 



In hi.-^ rebuttal, my enemy drew the following parallel 

 to the editor of the Atlantic and himself : 



"It is as if Mr. Einstein made public a mathematical 

 assertion that two and two make five, and escaped contradic- 

 tion until his feat of ledgerdemain came to the notice of 

 Babe Ruth, who, to save the rising generation from futile 

 -perplexity, had the temerity to reprove the Euclidian protag- 

 onist." 



