RECENT BOTANICAL LITERATURE. 45 
note* With the specimens of Bentham before him Dr. Gray 
has perceived that while the E. ecspifosa and E. tenuifolia 
are one species, that which was mistaken for the latter, first 
by Sir William Hooker and. afterwards by myself, is distinet. 
. This raises a question of the propriety of retaining the name 
lenuifolia for the plant now so designated. If kept, the 
strictest accuracy will require that one write, not simply Æ. 
tenuifolia, Hook., but £. lenuifolia, Hook., Greene, nec 
enth., a phrase so cumbersome that one would run all risks 
of being misunderstood and of confusing people's minds, 
rather than employ it. Furthermore, sinee no botanist's eye 
is all-seeing, or any botanists judgment infallible, who can 
assure us that no one will, in the future, find Bentham's E. 
ceespitosa and E. tenuifolia to be distinct and the E. tenui- 
folia, Hook. et. al., also a species by itself? It seems to us 
bad practice to ever knowingly apply to one species a name 
which has been used to designate another, and that the chari- 
table thing on Dr. Gray's part would have been to give this 
speeies in question a new name at once, thus precluding, if he 
is right in the identification he announces, innumerable possi- 
bilities of future complieation in the synonymy of the genus. 
Tt was an unenviable task, that of revising our Portulacacee, 
and we of the West, to whose region belong almost all the 
species (and genera too, if there be any genera), are under 
speeial obligations to Dr. Gray for the learning he has 
3.:EscHSCHOLTZIA GLAUCA. Perennial, very glaucous, erect, 2—4 feet 
high, of a loosely cymose and sometimes distinetly diehotomous inflor- 
escence : leaves small, their segments linear and little divergent; torus 
with a narrow but manifest spreading rim : petals an inch long, with 
orange spot at base and commonly a narrow border of the same color at 
the truncate summit, otherwise light yellow : seeds globular, reticulated : 
cotyledons linear, cleft to the middle. 
On dry clayey hillsides of the interior basin of Santa Cruz Island. 
Near Z. Californica and best distinguished from it by the peculiar glau- 
cous whiteness of the herbage, and by the profusion and the cymose ar- 
rangement of its flowers. The red margin of the corollas, if it were 
broad enough to be conspicuous, would make this plant a great deside- 
ratum with cultivators. 
