OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 87 



S. mucronatum is the old species, i. e. S. angustifolium of Miller. His 

 S. Bermudiana is distinguished as having a broadly winged branching 

 stem and equally bracted spathes, and he cites S. anceps, Cav., as 

 probably a variety. Nuttall in his "Genera" simply mentions three 

 species, S. anceps, S. mucronatum, and S. Bermudiana, and Sweet is 

 cited (" Brit. Fl. Gard., 2 ed., 498 ") as having given to the last the 

 name S. Nuttallii. Later Americau botanists have endeavored to dis- 

 tinguish two species, S. anceps and S. mucronatum, by the characters 

 of the perianth, spathes, and stems, but with so little satisfaction that 

 more recently Dr. Torrey and Dr. Gray have united them as varieties 

 under the Bermudan species S. Bermudiana. A comparison of such 

 fruiting specimens as have come in my way have shown an evident 

 difference in the seeds of our common species, some being globose, 

 quite strongly pitted, and less than \ a line in diameter, others more 

 angled, rather less pitted, and about twice larger (rather more than 

 ^ line broad). This difference of seed appears always to accompany 

 a difference of habit, the larger seed belonging to the simple stemmed 

 form (S. angustifolium), while the plant with smaller seeds is always 

 branching, bearing several spathes. This seems to justify the reten- 

 tion of the two species of our early botanists, and, restoring Miller's 

 name for one, there seems to me no good objection to keeping up 

 Cavanilles's name for the other. Both species are very commonly dis- 

 tributed through the eastern United States, from Canada to the Gulf. 

 The species of the Gulf region still need investigation. 



Allium hyalinum, Curran in herb. Bulb-coats gray, the areolae 

 of the peculiar reticulation narrowly linear and much contorted : 

 leaves several, very narrow : scape slender, a foot high or less ; spathe 

 bifid, unilateral ; pedicels rather few, an inch long or less : perianth 

 white to purplish, broad, 3 to A\ lines long, the acute segments broadly 

 lanceolate to ovate, the inner somewhat narrower : stamens a third 

 shorter, the filaments dilated at base: ovary not crested.— First col- 

 lected at Salmon Falls in Eldorado Co., California, by Mis- M. K. 

 Curran, June, 1881 ; also recently found by Mr. T. S. Brandegee on 

 Santa Cruz Island. The flowers much resemble those of A. cam- 

 panulalum, which is a stouter plant with broader leaves, the reticula- 

 tion in the bulb-coats minute and extremely sinuous, the filaments 

 more slender, and the ovary crested. 



