114 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



Nature's Exactness. — Your observations on Nature's 

 <'xactness in the Note and Comment department of your May- 

 issue, reminds me of a little aster-like flower which I have 

 collected on the desert, Monoptilon hellidiforme. Each flower- 

 head is composed of perhaps 15 or 20 florets, each of which 

 jn'oduces a single seed, and every spring tens of thousands of 

 Ihese little plants come into being, making myriads of seeds 

 thus produced. The marvelous thing about them, however, 

 is that on the upper edge of each of those myriad seed is 

 borne one tiny bristle which drops with the seed. It is a case 

 of degenerate pappus, and the wonder is that nature, busy 

 rs she is the v.^orld over, never forgets that solitary bristle for 

 rach of those little florets away out there among the coyotes 

 rnd prairie dogs of the Mojave Desert. — C. F. Saunders, Pas- 

 adena, Cat. 



Nomenclature Again. — It is not botanists, alone, that 

 are bothered with the name-tinkers. In a recent number of 

 Science, ]. L. Kingsley writes that he has been looking for 

 fixity in zoological names for thirty years and the end seems 

 as far away as ever. We quote from his article as follows : 

 "It is all very well to indulge in these antiquarian researches, 

 Ihese games of taxonomic logomachy, if they be recognized as 

 r-uch, but the players fail to recognize one thing : Names of 

 animals and plants are but means for easy reference; nomen- 

 < lature is not the end and object of all biological science. This 

 digging up of forgotten screeds means but the relegating of 

 the great masters of the past to a secondary position ; this 

 framing of ex post facto laws offers a precedent for the future 

 subject of that intolerable disease once known as "mihi itch" 

 lo set aside as lightly the laborious schemes of the sciolists 

 <if today. Biologists may apparently be divided into two 

 j„TOups : one contains those who find great enjoyment in re- 

 tiaming things already well named and v.ho regard names as 

 the object of all science. The other group have something to 



