31 



ware that Wat3on published H. flagellars (Bot. Cal 2 483) which 

 Krsenzlin meant. In his key p. 614 Kydberg says " Lip linear i. 

 e. not at all dilated at the base". Now out of the 8 species he has 

 given under this head he figures 4 with dilated base, and H. stria- 

 ta which he places first would make 5. We repeat "A work with 

 such numerous and glaring mistakes reflects little credit to its 

 author". Though Rydberg must take his own medicine 1 do not 

 approve of this babyish claptrap style of inferential argument. Be- 

 cause Rydberg was too careless to look in the appendix of Bot. 

 Cal., and Krasnzlin's typesetter or copyist misspelled a word proves 

 nothing but Rydberg's special tendency to quibble. Either man 

 might be an expert for all that. If a man had the be.-t proof read- 

 ers in Government employ behind him, who can spend a week in 

 chasing down a turned letter and put before you a clean proof with 

 all his and your errors corrected it might be different, but most 

 of us have to contend not only with our own exasperating slips 

 but with ignorant or lazy Union linotypers who charge you two 

 prices for butchering your text, anb then compel you to correct 

 all proofs the first of which when corrected is like a war map and 

 margin too small to hold the corrections. Then after about four 

 seances with the typesetter and a few with the proprietor you get 

 so that you cannot sue straight up, and so the matter goes to press 



and you . Well, you are grateful that it is over. The value 



of every man's work is purely a question of keenness of observation 

 absence of bias and willingness and capacity to interpret Nature 

 as he finds it. 



The field botanist knows that the western species of Habenaria 

 occur in three well marked groups. 0n£ has the bottle-like spur, 

 H. stricta, this is often with lurid (usually green) flowers and then 

 is Rydberg's Limnorchis purpurascena. The other two groups are 

 with slender and falcate spurs at least 5 times as long as wide and 

 variably clavate. One group has green flowers, the other white, 

 and they grow side by side and shade together. The spur varies 

 from V as long as the lip to 3-4 times its length, and from filiform 

 to broadly linear, and every sort of leaf variation is found with the 

 varying forms as well as leaf development. The green forms are 

 those with a tendency to excess of chlorophyll in all parts and a di- 

 minution of leaf- and increase of bract-surface, with mostly more 

 slender stems and looser inflorescence (effects of ecological condi- 

 tions persisting through one or two generations o«ily), other forms 

 are the reverse, i. e. succulent stems and small bracts and white 

 flowers. It reminds one of the cleistoiramous Viola forms and the 

 reciprocal relations of style and corolla in some borages. Kraenz- 

 lin therefore was justified in making wholesale reduction of spe- 



