THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 53 



Letters fnnn him now fullowed each otht-r thick and fast. 

 Failin.i; to convince nic that my (|nc'st had hccn fruitless (or 

 rather Howcrless), lie turned to a w ell-reco_i;iii/.(.(l botanical 

 authorit\" anil. mi>(|uotini; m\- c^sa\' frum memoi"\. jjropound- 

 ed a hypothetical (juestion as to whether 1 could possihh, have 

 discovered a real blue dandelion. 



Ouick as a shot, his botanic majesty replieil : 



"I have never heard the name applied without qualifi- 

 cation to anythiniL^ except Taraxacum, or with (|ualification 

 to anything except a plant of the Compositae familv with 

 comparatively large, yellow, dandelion-like flowers. There- 

 fore I say unreservedly that there is no such thing as a blue 

 dandelion." 



How simple! .Ml you have to do is to define "dande- 

 lirm" as "Taraxacum or any similar ycUoiv flower", and of 

 course there can be no blue dandelions. Selah ! Whatever 

 that may mean. 



With all due respect to my ow^n profession, that botan- 

 ist ought to be a lawyer. Or perhaps, from his readiness to 

 condemn a fellow-man ex parte, he ought to be a Judge. 



About this time a lady in Washington. D. CV. wrote me 

 that she thought she knew the flower I meant, only it was pink. 



From then on there ensued a blessed respite, until the 

 fall of 192v'5. when flower-lovers from all over tlie Ignited 

 States began t(; bombard me with requests for seeds of the 

 blue dandelion. In this T think that T can see the fine Italian 

 hand of my late antagonist, the vaude-villian. 



Unfortunately, my twenty-foot row of blue-dandelion 

 plants, although flourishing with a tropical luxuriance, ha.^ 

 not produced a single seed. Nothing to blow about, as it 

 were. And so I must deny the request of these myriad 

 friends of my enemy. 



Probablv he. with his characteristic literalness, will now 



