246 . 
PITTONIA. 
In Watson's Index, of a later date by almost forty years, 
no more than twenty-five species are enumerated. A goodly 
number of new ones had been brought to light during that 
long interval; but the author of the Index made confusion of 
several which earlier authors had well distinguished ; hence 
"the seemingly small increase of species in the thirty-eight 
years between 1840 and 1878. 
The recent Synopsis by Professor Trelease, appearing only 
a decade later than Dr. Watson’s monograph, concedes to the 
genus in North America, thirty-two species. Five new ones 
are proposed, and the present writer has been followed in the 
restoration of two of those of Nuttall which had been sup- 
pressed. The paper seems to be a real contribution to the 
published knowledge of Ceanothus ; and, that it should have > 
been such, was not at all a matter of course. For what was 
to be altogether a study of the herbarium and library, a more 
difficult subject could hardly be chosen than this genus. The 
individual flower is seareely mentioned in describing species. 
It is the same thing in all. By the fruits they may be sepa- 
rated into groups; and the anthotaxy ean scarcely be em- 
ployed to any greater advantage. The species, in a word, are 
all rested upon vegetative eharaeters, and mode of growth. 
The last named is the most important point of all; and 
scarcely a vestige of that can be made out, even inferentially, 
from the herbarium representations of the species. In order 
to a very satisfactory discussion of the genus, nothing 
would seem more needful than a knowledge of the shrubs 
as they appear in their native wilds, where, up and down the 
Pacific coast of the continent, for a thousand miles and more, 
some twenty-five or thirty-five kinds of them make up largely 
the almost impenetrable brush-wood of the hill and mountain 
slopes, at all elevations, and for from two hundred to eight 
hundred miles inland. Our author, although a stranger to 
the ceanothus hills of California—we hope he may not always 
remain such—has given us, we say, a truly valuable paper. 
notwithstanding that we may not be quite able to reduce all 
the forms we know of, to places and names in the Synopsis. 
