46 PITTONIA. 
lavished on them in this paper. As regards Montia and Clay- 
tonia, the abundant concurrence of both, in a vast number of 
forms, on the Pacifie Coast, renders this the only natural field 
for the study of them. We abandoned some years ago all 
hope of really distinguishing the two genera. No better dis- 
tinetion ean be drawn than that subsisting between scapose, 
and leafy-branched herbs ; a character which imparts a differ- 
ence in aspect, but can not, even in Portulacacece, be accepted 
as of generie value. Yet this, if stood by, would throw into 
Montia the section Montiastrum of Claytonia, one of the 
species of which Mr. Watson, as it appears by Dr. Gray, 
actually and very naturally, named as a Montia. The total 
failure of the original character of three stamens and unequal 
somewhat united petals, is tacitly admitted in the revision ; 
and that is equivalent to giving up Claytonia, which will 
nevertheless, be retained ; but out of a mere delicacy of feel- 
ing (with which we are in full sympathy), for the name of 
our American Clayton so long connected with that charming 
early vernal flower of the Atlantic slope, than from any strictly 
phytographical consideration. 
If it is purposed to keep Spraguea in the rank of a genus, it 
will need a less dubious support in the Synoptical Flora than 
has been brought to it in this preliminary paper, where the 
only remark pertaining to it, as a genus, is this: “I think that 
Spraguea should still be retained upon the assigned charac- 
ters." After reading this, one naturally goes back a few pages, 
to the conspectus of genera, desirous of learning what charac- 
ters ean possibly have been assigned : and behold, Spraguea is 
not so much as named there ; but Calyptridium is so defined as 
plainly to include it. The most generous construction which 
can be put upon all this is, that our author when he had fin- 
ished his conspectus of the genera was of the opinion that 
Spraguea is no genus, and that later he somewhat uncertainly 
took, or was inclined to take, a different view of the matter, 
and said so, without troubling himself to go back and make 
his paper, as a whole, coherent upon the subject. There was 
perhaps no connection, in the writer’s mind, between the sen- 
