it comes to us eo nina Botanists of the present plished 
be 
are accomplishing much good work in the right direction by 
going into the field and personally collecting many of the plants 
which later they study in the dried state, but as yet little has 
been done along the line indicated by Mr. Lunell; yet it is the 
true way to get at the “life history” of plants. 
To my mind the varieties described in this paper represent 
the true use of the term variety as applied to forms found in 
nature. A variety should be what the name implies, a form or 
variation that is liable at any time to revert to the original, or 
to change into something else, and grows near the species with 
which it is associated—not a clearly marked form often found 
many miles from the species under which it is placed. Why is 
it necessary to name varieties? Since they are not stable, but 
as has been shown in this article, are influenced by purely local 
conditions, and change from one form to another and wzce versa 
as the conditions change, it seems better to let them go un- 
named, merely stating under the description of a species that it 
runs into certain forms under favorable conditions. 
At present I ain not willing to admit, on the evidence sub- 
mitted, that Sagzttaria cuneata is not a species distinct from 
arifolia. ‘There are three varieties, monomorpha, stricta, and 
dimorpha, which are plainly the saine plant, but between these 
three and the other two, Jolymorpha and cuneata, there is drawn 
a line, and we find no mention of the crossing of this line. In 
addition, the figures in the Illustrated Flora show a marked dif- 
ference in the shape of the seeds of .S. avzfolza as compared with 
those of .S. cuneata, a very vital point. 
We quite agree with the editor of the Fern Bulletin when 
he says in the April number of that journal that ‘‘when a plant 
is named it is zamed,and no amount of juggling will change 
