394 BicKNELL: HAVE WE ENOUGH NEW ENGLAND BLACKBERRIES ? 
accounted for in recent print. If the study of what had thus been 
offered should fall into no final Rafinesquian entanglement, there 
was the hope that it might unfold some long concealed but con- 
sistent and beautiful multiple structure of evolution’s handiwork. 
And if, peradventure, there should be disclosed any sad mixture 
of dislocated facts and naive fancies, then those unwisely conserv- 
ative botanical forefathers should be held to their proper blame. 
In any case, the problem required some attempt at solution. 
Hence these lines. 
Two fundamental facts about our blackberries should not long 
escape the most casual student. Even the least unstable species 
possess some kind of ready pliancy, which answers, often with 
marked emphasis, to slightly changed conditions of growth; and, 
further, all the species by some freely practised method of versa- 
tility acquire variously in combination with their own proper 
characters the features of associated members of their group. 
These facts import an extraordinary natural variability and un- 
doubtedly, also, a facility in hybridizing which is perhaps not ex- 
ceeded in any other genus of our flora. 
A number of years ago, before these facts were well apprehended, 
the blackberries of York County, Maine, excited my wonder and 
engaged my particular attention. Who knows but that for a 
warning sounded by President Brainerd the observer of those 
days might have complacently occupied the pitfall which thus 
jnvited any artless and too self-assured purveyor of spurious 
species? President Brainerd’s admonition, which was not unduly 
apprehensive, as later events have shown, may well be quoted 
here: “Our American blackberry is so excessively variable that 
in order to be completely understood it may in time need to be 
presented under as many mental types. But we most sincerely 
hope that only experts—after years of study—will attempt it.’’* 
Since the day of that admonition, York County, Maine, has 
become distinguished as a stronghold of blackberry trouble. 
Here a Canadian flora is thrown out along a partly deforested 
country fronting the ocean shore, which has also received a counter- 
invasion of the coastwise flora of more southern New England. 
The condition of compression within this coastal strip may well 
*Rhodora 2: 23, 24. F 1900. 
