BOTANICAL LITERATURE. a 941 
No generic character is given; there was small need of 
that; the limits of the genus are not in the least uncertain. 
It is what one may call a natural genus. But there are 
diffarences between the few Atlantic species and the many 
western forms which might well have been indicated; per- 
haps they would have been, had the author clearly recog- 
nized them. The Atlantic Ceanothi, at least C. Americanus 
and C. ovatus, are deciduous and flower from the new and 
growing wood. The thirty or more which belong to the West 
are evergreen, with one exception, 7. e., C. sanguineus ; and 
nearly all flower from the hardened wood of the preceding 
year's growth. The error of treating them all as flowering 
from the new wood, though scarcely affecting the naturalness 
of Professor Trelease's new grouping of the species, shows 
how an able botanist may err in his widest generalizations, 
when unfamiliar with the life history of the subjects of his 
study. 
We have only one Californian ceanothus which is closely 
allied to the eastern C. Americanus in that it is semi-her- 
baceous and flowers from the new wood. Thatis C. decumbens. 
In C. papillosus and some of its near kindred the principal 
flowering takes place early, and from the old wood, but is often 
followed by a second display of bloom from the new, or grow- 
ing branchlets. In many cases, the flower-clusters, even from 
old wood, are borne on long and leafy stalks which, at flower- 
ing time, are quite indistinguishable from true branches ; but 
their real peduncular character is proven in autumn, when 
they not only shed their bract-like leaves, but die back to 
their parent branch and ultimately fall away. In the whole 
Cerastes section, and in other groups as well, the: flower-buds 
are all formed upon the old wood in autumn, and break into 
bloom on all the younger branches in early spring before the 
new growth is begun. We are scarcely able to understand 
how the Cerastes species could have been so misunderstood, 
in even a closet study of them. But what has befallen the 
botanieal wing of the California Academy, that it may no 
longer be entrusted with even the editing of a valuable 
