272 



ture of the peculiarity, these names to otherwise follow the rules 

 for the names of species. 



Further, it would be extremely good if those botanists who 

 are interested would discuss the matter of names, and agree upon 

 a code name to be adopted in every case of certain common va- 

 rieties — for instance, *^ albijlorus " for a pure white mutation of 

 the flower, in which case the name would be intelligible without 

 the necessity of quoting the author's name. 



This admitted, my Suyrinchiiim anceps becomes f pallidiflo- 

 rum, since it is clearly a '' form " in the technical sense. At the 

 same time, there is room for much difference of opinion as to 

 what is a " form," and it may often take patient observation and 

 experiment to determine the rank of a plant. Mr. C. R. Orcutt 

 tells us, in the last number of his paper, how a yellow-flowered 

 Mimulus cardinalis narrowly escaped ranking as a new species, 

 while now it has no name at all, though as a ** form '* it fully de- 



serves one, and a very interesting form it is, when we remember 

 that throughout organic nature, whether plants, birds, moths or 

 moUusks, red has always a tendency to revert to yellow. What, 

 again, of the RaiuinailiLS aqiiatilis group, with its hosts of so- 

 called species, which Hiern says are formed by the flow of water 

 and like obvious conditions, and comes with mathematics to prove 

 it, while those systematists who listen to hifn turn away fron^ 

 these plants in scorn, " not even ^w^ varieties," to them quite 

 abominable because we can know something of their nature ? 



T. D. A. COCKERELL. 



West Cliff, Colorado, July 17, i88g. 



Remarks on the Preceding Pap 



M 



have appealed to all systematists and have yet never been satis- 

 factorily solved. Incidentally, I have given them considerable 

 thought and had gone so far as to introduce the term '' forma " 

 into my catalogue of the Plants of New Jersey, now in press, in 

 very much the manner suggested by him, restricting its use, 

 however, not necessarily to variations with but a slight degree of 

 permanency, but to such as we may, perhaps, term physiological 

 rather than structural Variations in color are one set of these 



