18 ERYTHEA. 



orbiculatus is named as a synonym of S. tortuosiis, Kellogg. 

 S. hesperidis is reduced to S. Breweri, Gray, with which we 

 are not inclined to quarrel. Dentaria is sustained as distinct 

 from Cardamiue by virtue of relative size of flowers and 

 seeds, and form of pods— technical distinctions being strictly 

 absent. The Western species placed under this genus need 

 much patient study. For the present, however, we are un- 

 willing to assent to the proposition that there are so few as 

 five "definable species" in Western America. 



It is easy in our region, we are ready to admit, by disre- 

 garding the solution of a genus as a whole to pick out strik- 

 ing forms and describe them as species. It is likewise easy 

 to "remand" these. Nothing is quite so much needed in 

 many of our peculiar West American genera as the judicious 

 extension of specific diagnoses to include other than type 

 forms. Not the less needed are rather full and accurate 

 descriptions of the array of anomalous forms. 



We do not wish to be given to pessimistic opinions but no 

 settlement of the annual species in such a genus as Strep- 

 tanthus is likely soon to be agreed upon. We think that no 

 one has a very definite conception of the amount and degree 

 of periodic variation from year to year in the Coast Ranges 

 of California. We are not the first who have been impressed 

 by the apparent disappearance of "species," but little notice 

 has been taken of the smaller variations which are in evi- 

 dence at intervals but which no one has seen fit to describe 

 as varieties or forms. In any event the rejection of Cheiran- 

 thus as a genus, the complexion of Eschscholtzia, and many 

 other things in the fascicle must come as something of a 

 shock to those who have so long accepted the Botany of Cali- 

 fornia as their book of the laws and the prophets. 



While the Synoptical Flora can at the present time be only 

 provisional in so far as it relates to many West American 

 genera, it need not as a forerunner be the less useful or the 

 less worthy of praise. In fact the present fascicle seems to 

 us most praiseworthy in that it bears more the marks of a 

 tentative work than any of the parts which have gone before; 



