BULLETINS OF U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGEICULTURE. 205 



it iu bis Lichenofjraph. Prodr. (1798) (p. 219). Twelve years later, 

 however, in liis Liche)wf/raph. Univ. (1810), p. 120, he replaced it by 

 Alectoria, giving no reason for the change, and the second name 

 has been universally adopted by lichenologists. Here, then, is a 

 good chance for somebody to trot out all the subsequently described 

 species of Alectoria under the name Setaria, which, without doubt, 

 has priority I 



As regards Mr. Scribner's first reason, we see that it holds if we 

 consider that a seed-plant and a lichen cannot have the same generic 

 name. As regards the second reason for getting rid of Setaria, "its 

 first application to a species of Pennisetum places it at once among 

 the synonyms," this is a bad piece of book-work, and illustrates the 

 great danger of rushing out new genera without even working up the 

 literature. If Mr. Scribner had been revising the genus — and we 

 think that only under such conditions has a man any right to make 

 a wholesale change in the names of the species — he would probably 

 have found his opening statement inaccurate. He says the name 

 Setaria "was first applied by Beauvois (in Oware and Benin) to a 

 species of Pennisetum." Now, as a matter of fact, although the 

 volume in question (Beauvois' Fl. (VOware et Benin, vol. ii.) bears 

 the date 1807 on its title-page and 1810 on its cover, part of it at 

 any rate was not published till after 1810. There are frequent 

 references to names published in Brown's Prodromns (1810), but 

 what makes it especially bad for Mr. Scribner's reputation as a 

 bibliographer is that at the place in question (ii. 80), immediately 

 following the name Setaria we read ''Setaria Ess. d'Ai/rost."! It 

 looks as if Mr. Scribner had not even troubled to refer to the 

 description of the genus which he is so anxious to re-name. If we 

 refer to Beauvois' Essai d'Affrostnt/raphie, we find (p. 51) ''Setaria 

 nob.," followed by a description and an enumeration of those 

 species of Panicnm (including ijlaucuni, italicum, verticil/atum, and 

 viride) which the author considered to belong to his genus. Tliere 

 is no reference to the Elore d,' Oware et Benin, nor to the species, 

 S. lonijiseta, which is described on p. 80. On p. 70, under Sac- 

 charitm, is another reference to the Essai, in which the number 

 of the page and that of a figure and plate are cited, so that it seems 

 pretty clear that, whatever the date on the cover of the larger work, 

 part, at any rate, and that the part now in question, did not appear 

 till after the Essai (1812), and that the first description of Setaria 

 as a genus of grasses represents not Pennisetum, but what is now, 

 and has been for years, understood by Beauvois' name. 



Bulletin No. 5 is "A Report upon the Grasses and Forage 

 Plants of the Rocky Mountain Region," by P. A. Rydberg & C. L. 

 Shear, and contains forty-eight pages, with twenty-nine figures in 

 the text. The figures are as poor and of as little value as those in 

 the former Bulletin. The matter, which includes certain field notes 

 and general observations on the value of the plants from an economic 

 point of view, better represents the work of a department of agri- 

 culture than the "Studies." 



A. B. Rendle, 



