24 PITTONIA. 
to appear like a mere bloom, some with veinless, others with 
strongly feather-veined leaves, the margins of which are, in 
this form entire, in that sharply toothed—I wonder whether 
authors, in allowing but one species of Zauschneria, have not 
been dazzled and then misled by the large, brilliant fuchsia- 
like corollas of these plants ; for it is evident they must have 
been looking to the corollas for specific characters, just as if 
the genus were an ally of Fuchsia, rather than of Epilobium. 
It is altogether unscientific to assume that where flowers are 
large they must, for that reason, furnish characters, and that 
only where they are minute one may safely leave them and 
betake himself to pubescence and foliage for the marks of 
species. In a word, Zauschneria is very intimately related 
to that principal part of Epilobium in which, in generally ad- 
mitted species by the. dozen if not by the score, the corollas 
present no characters whatever, are never, mentioned in 
deseribing the plants specifically, and all is rested upon pu- 
bescence, taken along with the insertion, venation and tooth- 
ing of the leaves ; save that now and then a good seed charac- 
ter presents itself. 
By the selfsame principles upon which so very many of the 
forms of Epilobium have been named and acceptably defined 
as species, we may hope that in course of time something like 
order may be brought forth from this confused assemblage of 
quite different looking plants hitherto known as Zauschneria 
Californica. The present effort must not be reckoned upon 
as more than tentative. There is much, doubtless, still to be 
learned concerning the forms. Our collections are too scanty, 
considering the vastness of the territory which they occupy. 
Collectors have neglected them, as collectors will always neg- 
lect when they have been told that all they meet with are 
mere forms of one species. Our ample, characteristic and 
beautiful genus Eschscholtzia suffered too long by the same 
neglect from the same cause. 
Before passing to the formal presentation of my conception 
of Zauschneria as known to-day, I would say that the flowers 
are not by any means just alike in all the forms. The dif- 
SS cn e 
