188 PITTONIA. 
Å. ROSEA. ZEPHYRANTHES ROSEA, Lindl. Bot. Reg. t. 821 
(1824). Amaryllis rosea Spreng.? Native of the West Indies. 
A. TAUBERTIANA. Zephyranthes Taubertiana, Harms, in 
Regel's Gartenflora, xlv. 281, t. 1427 (1896). A Brazilian 
species. : 
RawuNcULACEOUS MONOTYPES. 
In a letter addressed to the writer many years since, the 
late Dr. Asa Gray expressed his own dislike of monotypic 
genera; but in thé same sentence he made the admission 
that “nature likes them.” Here was a virtual acknowledg- 
ment that the herbarium botanist scarcely dares to be natu- 
ral in his systematizing ; preferring, as “ safer,” the methods a 
of the artificialist and the empiric. Such tendencies are the 
natural outcome of years of work done almost exclusively 
in the herbarium ; for here the scantiness of resource nar- 
nowly impels one to the uncertain guidance of the merest 
and driest technicalities. f 
According to nature, a genus is a genus whether it em- 
brace five species or ten, a thousand, or only one; and the 
three which I here discuss are, so far as known, monotypical. 
KUMLIENIA HYSTRICULA, Greene, Bull. Calif. Acad. i. 337 
(Pittonia, Plate II). Ineed not here repeat the excellent 
characters of the genus. The accompanying plate, from & 
carefully done and very accurate drawing by Mr. Holm, 
plainly exhibits the unique corolla-like calyx, the circle of 
small staminodial organs which take the place of petals, and 
the long slender pubescent utricle which corresponds to the 
achene in the genus Ranunculus. 
When twenty years since Dr. Gray published the plant as 
a new Ranunculus, he did so in terms that illustrate fully 
the Linnean artificialism that ruled his botanical iem T 
the essential empireism of his own taxonomic methods; for — 
Ace 
