234 TRELEASE— SPECIES IN AGAVE. [April 22, 



to reveal the location of the mines from which they were drawing 

 wealth, the fact that the traffic was large and profitable is respon- 

 sible for the preservation of some disjointed scraps of information 

 that may now and then be pieced together into clues that show 

 where some of the most extensive and varied collections were made, 

 •and thus indirectly ensure reference to wild plants for species based 

 on long lost garden specimens. It is with no small satisfaction that 

 hy means of such a devious argument I have been able to follow in 

 the footsteps of the collector Roezl, and to understand at least a 

 part of the species of his collecting that had otherwise passed into 

 troublesome uncertainty ; and no opportunity has been missed to 

 examine the precise locality indicated as having been visited by 

 "botanists whose writings or collections have entered into the history 

 of the genus — as, for instance, the lava beds on which Schiede 

 found one of its most persistent stumbling blocks. Agave lophaiitha, 

 and one of its good but long-discarded other species, A. obsciira. 



In such a study, essentially an honest effort to see and account 

 for the forms actually presented by nature, so that others may 

 see and know them, one must always be moulded by the times that 

 he lives in. If unable to apply a unit-character criterion in dis- 

 criminating between species, I find myself equally unable to adopt so 

 broad a gauge for their measure as to join under one name the 

 manifold West Indian forms in which so good a botanist as Grise- 

 bach could seen only the century plant. I find, however, that in 

 these plants, long-lived, slow-growing, and even in the field most 

 commonly seen only in their vegetative dress, a successful study 

 calls for attention to minutiae that, being unnecessary for segrega- 

 tions in most groups, receive there less attention than they really 

 merit, and are often looked on with suspicion when used. Ascer- 

 taining the stability and significance of these proves at once a 

 fascinating and disturbing part of the study. 



In fruit, flower, pedicel, bract and scape characters, the agaves 

 do not offer variation or differentiation very unlike what is usual 

 in other genera of equal range and size; but in many cases in 

 which such characters are still unavailable, those drawn from the 

 leaves, and utilized in the description of species from young garden 



