152 PITTONIA. 
that the generic character would suffice; as it will when a 
genus really is monotypic. 
But coming down sixty-five years, from Bentham’s date 
of publication to that of Asa Gray in the Synoptical Flora, 
although Platystemon material is now in hand from all over 
a stretch of territory equalin extent to nearly half of Europe, 
and showing great diversities as to flower and fruit, and 
even of habit and foliage, still no real specific character is 
given. The difficulties of the situation are evaded. The 
task that would then have cost a careful and conscientious 
taxonomist three months’ if not a half year’s arduous toil is 
left undone. Ten good species, if not twenty or forty, might 
be embraced within the limitations of the pretended specific 
definition in the work cited (p. 84); and this, I repeat, is no 
specific character at all. Nor are my own in the Flora 
Franciscana and the Manual much better. All that can be 
said in extenuation of their faults is, that in neither was 
there a dealing with plants of more than a very limited 
area, the species appertaining to which, had they all been — 
defined, would not have been so numerous. 
Platystemon, according to the plentiful data now at hand, 
ranges from a little below Cape San Quentin on Mexican 
territory, northward to Cape Mendocino in the northern 
part of California, a distance of some 850 or 900 miles; while 
at the north the belt extends inland across two or three 
mountain ranges 200 miles, and to the southward across to 
Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, some 500 or 600 miles. This 
area may be about equal to that of the States and provinces 
from the southern peninsula of Michigan across to Massa- 
chusetts and southward to the Gulf of Mexico and northern 
Florida. On the continent of Europe, Spain, Portugal, and 
France, with the Netherlands and some part of England 
together, would represent about an equal area. But neither 
in any part of Europe, nor on the Atlantic slope of North 
