120 PITTONIA. 
of Clematis, as far as habit and floral characters go.’ Thus 
effectively do the European and East American species of 
Dentaria conceal their real and close affinity for Cardamine; 
and it is not until Pacifie North America is reached that this 
disguise is put aside. 
I do not know of more than two American botanists who 
have at any time yielded up their earlier prejudices, arid 
adopted the view that Cardamine and ` Dentaria are congen- 
eric. One of these two I know to have been brought over. 
by a study of the Pacific coast species; and the other may 
reasonably be supposed to have reached such convictions in 
the same way. Alphonso Wood in his Botanist and Florist, 
issued in 1870, transfers all the eastern Dentaria species to 
the other genus. He makes no mention of how he had been 
brought to that view; but, as he was far enough from being 
a blind adherent to the doctrines of any great master like 
Bentham, and, as he had a few years before 1870 made ex- 
tensive field researches on the Pacific coast, I infer that it 
may have been the Cardamines of those regions which had 
chiefly influenced his mind. 
Ten years ago the present writer, having then devoted six 
years to special study of the Californian flora, felt himself 
obliged to accept Bentham’s view respecting this general 
group.! The concession was made as it were under a sort 
of natural compulsion. From the earliest years of botanical 
observation and reflection, I have felt averse to receiving 
within the same genus, plants of pronounced habital dissimi- 
larity ; and, if the so-called Dentarias of California and Ore- 
gon had been good Dentarias, such plants as any one fresh 
from Europe or the Eastern States would at first sight have 
pronounced to be of that genus, I should have been the last 
of men to have treated them as Cardamines. 
On the Pacific slope the number of Cardamines, in the 
Crantzian and Benthamian sense, is perhaps twice as great 
as on the Atlantic. Of true Cardamine there is a consider- — 
ee a 
*See Bull. Calif. Acad. ii, 389 (1886). 
