70° 
the Brittonian nomenclature has been at last interred for goo4 
would it not be a bright idea to send out invitations to the obsc- 
quies, or is the funeral to be strictly private: 
t is a fitting end to a system (professedly founded on recti- 
fying the injustice to botanists who first described varieties or 
species and being robbed of the credit by the transfer to a species 
or other genus according to the Candollean rules) that it should 
degenerate to bald botanical piracy. Rydberg repudiates the very 
system under which he has trained so long (after making about 
as many changes as were possible under it) and seems to adopt 
such part of the Vienna rules as suits him in order to make a new 
name. If anyone were seeking evidence of the personal character 
of Rydberg’s work that it is governed more by petty spites than 
scientific knowledge this would be ample evidence 
e same number (Torrey Bulletin for December) which 
e to hand after the rest of this paper was printed Rydberg 
iThawirates the point made by me above that when you pass the true 
specific limit in any case and make species out of variations the on- 
ly limit thereafter is chaos, for intergrades of all sorts abound an 
to be consistent the maker of these fake species must continue to 
nia’ pecies out of every possible variation between his so-calle 
specic s till they are — saa every new batch of species requires 
still more, ad infinitum. As the writer has already shown in pre- 
vious Contributions Ry yb and Greene’s work on Mertensia 
is untenable, and so in the latest Bulletin Rydberg is compelled 
to make a new batch of Mertensia intergrades between the former 
species and of course has to give them new names for they are as 
good species as any he has described, and none of them are any 
good. Fortunately some of these are from material collected by 
or has sh my boys (F. E. Leonard, etc.) of the old Agassiz club, 
e were on our botanical trips about Salt Lake City in the 
Nissi atitees. 
