VOL. IV.] E. L. Greene versus Asa Gray. 289 



article Dr. N. L- Britton was applied to for some examples of 

 Mr. Greene's Caryophyllacese, but very shortly after the letter 

 was dispatched a fragment of Paro7iycJiia pjisilla reached the 

 writer from another source, and it was identifiable at a glance. 

 Some time afterwards, and when the correction was already- 

 printed, Dr. Britton replied to my letter by saying that the plant 

 in question was the old Herniaria cinerca of Linnaeus, and that 

 he had made a note to that effect for publication. The remarks 

 of Mr. Greene on Convolvulus arvensis and Californica, for which, 

 according to his own account, he has rifled the private letters of 

 Dr. Gray, show a not entirely unexpected moral laxity, and a 

 recklessness of consequences quite out of keeping with his char- 

 acter and which can only be accounted for by his forgetfulness of 

 the old proverb concerning the danger of stone-throwing by one 

 whose house is so roofed and walled and even floored by glass. 



The remarks made by Mr. Greene about his discovery 

 during the lifetime of the latter, of Dr. Gray's "inexcusable" 

 error in transferring Dr. Kellogg's Hedeoma purpurea to Micro- 

 meria and his own magnanimity in shielding him from the 

 " humiliating" knowledge give a pleasant surprise to those who 

 were cognizant of the truly ecclesiastical hatred which he felt for 

 Gray in the last three years of his life. This kind of statement 

 should, however, be made with much caution and a due regard to 

 the danger of the existence of proof that the " discovery " was 

 made at a much later date. Besides, though it is extremely 

 painful to be obliged to demolish another of Mr. Greene's " facts," 

 Micronieria purpurea is not ^Mentha P2ilegium as he affirms. If 

 he has a specimen of the latter — it is not at all so common in 

 California as he would have us believe — one of his students will 

 be able to tell him that Mentha Pulegium has the throat of the 

 calyx closed by a villous ring and belongs to a different section 

 from Mentha Canadensis. Dr. Kellogg in the original descrip- 

 tion of Hedeoma f purp2irea\ says " throat naked. * * * This 



*This plant has been identified in a paper on the "Flora of Bouldiii 

 Island," Zoe, iv, 211-218. Reprint issued August 22, 1893. Dr. B. L. 

 Robinson of the Gray Herbarium concurring after comparison of abundant 

 material from the type locality, sent to him in 1892. 



tProc. Cal. Acad. v. 52. 



