CONTRIBUTIONS TO WESTERN BOTANY NO. 16 



botrys Urtica urens. As the years rolled by, and the calls on his time became 

 greater, and the infirmities of age became burdensome, his responses were 

 slower rnd at times quite annoying, because I had to name and distribute my 

 sets before it came time to go out in the field again. In one of these letters I 

 received from him he complained of the burden of years affecting his mem- 

 ory, and saying that he could not finish for some time. This was about 

 December 1st. The day before Christmas I received a fat letter with all the 

 names, and he wound up by saying that this was a Christmas present from 

 him. I never received even a querulous letter from him at any time. 



Since I was ae to a study of the flora of the West, I 



rapidly became proficient and needed less and less help in identifying. This 

 also led me to - fray and Watson was at fault 



in certain cases, for they did not know the ecological conditions under which 

 my plants grew. In the genus Arabis I found Watson's determinations 

 unsatisfactory, ai d it rea< bed such a point that I informed him that I would 

 publish m\ o\ n i :ii - for certain species of Arabis unless he agreed to 

 respect my manuscript names for them when he made his revision. He 

 never replied to this but he respected my name, Arabis pulchra, that I gave 

 to a certain species from western Nevada, and he made several new names 

 for plants that I had collected ai I u ii !: I felt were new. This is the 

 nearest I ever came to anv friction with either of these men. 



1 began early to publish notes in the Botanical Gazette and Torrey Bul- 

 letin, and in the early eighties I sent an occasional new species. It was at 

 this time that Greene also began to pul ose magazines. 



Gray was waging a bitter struggle . hu great synop- 



tical flora before the end, and he felt that the publication of our new species 

 vva> unjustifiable till be had had his say. I know this not from any word 

 from him to me but from his writing to Coulter and Gerard, editors of the 

 Gazette and Bull it they do not publish any of our new 



specie.- till thev had his approval. I know also that it annoyed him, for his 

 comment on my description of Iva Nevaden-is (Synoptical Flora), where 

 he goes out of 'his way to criticise my description of the akenes as being 

 striate, when he says they are not striate. Of course anyone who will 

 examine the mature akens will find that they are striate just as I described 

 them. In his criticism of Buckley, Gray showed the same unfairness, and 

 lack of discrimination. In other words, when he was angry he became unre- 

 liable. For some ten years I did not offer much for publication till after the 

 death of both Gray and Watson. Then when Zoe began I also began to 

 publish my view- on new species. Greene, as everybody knows, became rabid 

 in his hostility to Gray. 



My opinion of Gray is that in • |S the greatest 



botanist in America, but in quality of work he was inferior to Engelmann. 

 He made some egregious mistakes,' as we all do. For example, he described 

 my specimens of Convolvulus pentapetaloides as Breweria minima. He made 

 the genus Hemizonella out of species of Melampodium. 



Elihu Hall. He was, as I suppose, the Hall of Hall and Harbour, who 

 collected the first sets of Colorado plants. 1 never met him but got in cor- 



