314 Rydberg : Rocky Mountain flora 



number 787, about 28 per cent, of the whole flora ... Of the 

 787, no less than 244 were proposed by Professor Aven Nelson 

 himself; 152 are by Dr. Rydberg, of the New York Botanical 

 Garden, and 148 by Dr. E. L. Greene, now of the U. S. National 

 Museum, but at one time a resident of Colorado. . . . The 

 number of species accepted as valid is 2,733, while no less than 

 1,788 specific names are rejected as synonyms or insufficiently 

 known. Many of those latter were proposed by Professor Nelson 

 himself, more by Rydberg and Greene." 



Why should more (nearly 66 per cent, more) of Professor Nel- 

 son's species be acceptable and "many more" of Dr. Greene's and 

 my own be reduced to synonymy? Not counting the time before 

 the first edition of the Manual of the Rocky Mountain Region 

 appeared, Dr. Greene published on the flora for ten years, between 

 1885 and 1895, when practically no work was done by Professor 

 Nelson or myself, and he has published at least twice as many new 

 species from the Rocky Mountain Region as Professor Nelson. 

 Both Dr. Greene and myself have had access to much larger her- 

 baria and libraries than has Professor Nelson, and have seen speci- 

 mens from the Rockies which he has not seen. The New Manual, 

 therefore, seems to show a decided partiality for the species pro- 

 posed by Professor Nelson himself. Some partiality would be 

 expected, but in this case it seems out of proportion. Professor 

 Nelson is a very conscientious worker, and it would be unjust to 

 claim that this imparity in treatment was intentional. The main 

 cause, I think, is that he had not seen the types or authentic 

 material of many of the species so reduced. He knew his own 

 species, but not all of those proposed by other botanists. It was 

 not fair to them simply to reduce their species to synonymy, if 

 such species were unknown. If question-marks had been added to 

 show probable synonymy, the matter would have been improved 

 considerably. There are many cases in which I am confident 

 that Professor Nelson had no specimens illustrating species reduced 

 to synonymy. 



Some years ago I spent considerable time on Erigeron as repre- 

 ented in the Rockies and had seen the type or a duplicate of the 

 type of nearly every species described. In fact, I knew the genus 

 (one of the largest in the region) as well as any of the composite 

 genera. That I should have resumed the work on that genus just 



