VOL. IV.] lVriti7igs of Ediuard L. Greene. 65 



due to his really, in spite of frequent claims to the contrary, 

 slight knowledge of the forms belonging to our flora, especially 

 in view of the following presentment of his idea of the distinc- 

 tions of species. ' ' I have long been of the opinion that many 

 species exist in nature for which no specific characters can 

 easily, or even by any known criterion, be found at all in the 

 perfectly developed individual plant; in other terms that 

 completely and thoroughly distinct species may, and in some 

 cases do so closely simulate each other that, with ordinarily good 

 specimens before him, the most acute botanist will fail to be able 

 to separate even as varieties." * 



Mr. Greene herein makes it perfectly evident that a species 

 is not with him as with most of us a form of life with characters 

 suflBciently and constantly different from others to admit of a 

 clear description and with a name conveniently expressing rela- 

 tionship, but a distinct entity not necessarily in any close relation 

 to other forms now or previously on the earth and to be hunted 

 to its remotest lair properly labeled and put away on shelf for all 

 time. This kind of botany was taught, probably, in the middle 

 ages to which Mr. Greene properly belongs. 



The specific descriptions of Mr. Greene are a disgrace to 

 botany. Even in the few instances where he has named valid 

 species — and in such a multitude it sometimes happens — 

 he uniformly fails to grasp the salient points and mistakes 

 most of the rest. Some of these errors are so gross as to be, for a 

 man holding the position of the author, almost inconceivable, and 

 leave the reader to choose only between deliberate misstatement 

 and an ignorance of methods of scientific study unparalleled in 

 a Professor of botany of a modern university. It is, indeed, 

 to be suspected from his descriptions that, though he can write 

 learnedly of embryological observations made by others, his only 

 method of getting at even the cotyledons of any seed smaller than 

 a bean, is to sprout it. In the very few instances where he has 

 ventured to write about the ovules or embryo, his attempts have 

 been fraught with disaster, as in Viscainoaf for instance, where 

 with a seed of considerable size he described the embryo as 



* Pitt, i, 298. 



t Pitt, i, 163, 208. ■ 



