RANUNCULACEOUS MONOTYPES. 195 
buttereups. The beak of the achene is, by that figure, 
wholly ambiguous, that is, you may construe it as curved 
inwards or outwards as you like. This is, bowever, well 
suited to the contradiction made in the text accompanying 
the eut; for said beak is described as “incurved” in the 
generic character, and in the specific eharacter as “re- 
curved.” The student may take his choice; but the truth 
is, that this beak is neither recurved nor incurved, but in- 
flexed. 
There is not the slightest foundation that I can find for 
the statement made in the Synoptical Flora, that the achenes 
in this type are “somewhat utricular.” Such a character, 
were it to be found, would furnish at least some hint of a 
support to the doctrine of some of our contemporaries that 
this plant and our Kumlienia are interrelated. Such char- 
acters are doubtless wished for; but this one does not exist. 
The Cyrtorhyncha pericarp is neither thin nor loose, nor 
even turgid, as implying a loose investiture of the seed. 
EXPLANATION or Prats IV.—Small plant, natural size; a, sepal about 
6 times enlarged ; b, petal correspondingly enlarged ; c, head of achenes 
about 4 times enlarged ; d, achene about 5 or 6 times the natural size. 
New WESTERN PLANTS. 
ASTRAGALUS CAMPYLOPHYLLUS. Perennial, the tufted stems 
erect, flexuous and branching, 2 feet high, pale throughout 
with a fine short appressed pubescence, the foliage incon- 
spicuous and simulating sterile branches, the leaf consisting 
of a long eurved rachis with or without 1 to 3 distinct pairs 
of linear-filiform leaflets: fruit in rigidly erect terminal 
loose spikes: calyx campanulate, with 5 short triangular 
teeth: pods 4 inch long or more, erect, incurved, the valves 
thick, cartilaginous, with prominent sutures and clothed 
with a fine almost silky pubescence. 
