CONTRIBUTIONS TO WESTERN BoTANy No. 17 7 
s I know, Britton never but once tried this game on the botanical 
public ai an attempted to discredit the work of Mrs. Brandegee by intimat- 
ing that she had no “Botanical intuitions”. Since then I have been calling on 
on him to show some “botanical ee and up to date there has been 
no reply. Had Britton in the beginnig used the methods he has used of late, 
he would have got attacks only on ay ideas, but as everyone knows who was 
doing botanical work forty years ago he did not play the game on the square. 
He had for years been plotting the downfall of Harvard, but was too 
cowardly to come out into the open until after Gray and Watson died. Then 
raised no comment. But it was intended to give to himr and his hand-picked 
committee, the sanction of the A. A. S. for anything they might propose, 
but it was not so understood by those who voted for it. A year later when 
the product of this committee was published as the official output of the 
A. S. and proved to be a new botanical system, it raised a nation-wide 
howl, and was repudiated by the great majority of the A. A. §. Then Brit- 
ton had to take a new tack 
So he wrote to a selected few whom he thought were in favor of his 
scheme suggesting the formation of the Botanical Society of America. Even 
his hand-picked few turned the scheme down, saying the time was not ripe 
for such a move, but he went ahead and formed the Society with his rump 
coterie. Respect for the opinions of the botanical world required him to invite 
Harvard to help form this society. This was turned down and Robinson 
would not join it. Since then the organization has passed out of his control 
Flora and its financing by himself. In this his peculiar views on botany are 
duly set forth by his henchmen, particularly Rydberg. But the assumption 
of superior knowledge and “botanical intuition” is conspicuous by its ab- 
sence. 
Britton’s method is the effete one of Europe, which was rejected by 
Kew and the leading American botanists of the last generation, and I need 
not go into detail about it here 
WOOTON AND STANDLEY’S ASTRAGALI 
It has been my privilege recently to examine the types of these pro- 
posed species. None of them are any good. In their key they show a gross 
ignorance of relationship, putting Sonorae (humistratus var.) next to loti- 
florus; and albulus (humistratus) next to remulcus. In A. altus they do refer 
to its relationship to Rusbyi. It appears to be a form of strigulosus. 
albulus there was written in plain hand by, myself some years before the 
publication of this species, and on the type sheet that it was A. humistratus. 
There is no, recognition of this fact in the description of this species. On 
