82 EEYTHEA. 



That at the date of his publishing Synthyrts, Mr. Ben- 

 tham's mind— like that of many another botanist of that 

 time — was governed by Linnsean principles of an artificial 

 classification, is well shown by the fact that his best charac- 

 ter for the new genus is the 4-parted calyx; this organ being 

 5-parted in Vet^onica. But in truth, more than one of his 

 Synthyris species is now known to have the calyx some- 

 times, if not always, 5-parted; and in Veronica itself some 

 species have a 4-parted, others even a 3-parted, calyx. The 

 other character for Synthyris— &n6i it was upon this which he 

 rested most hopefully, in 1866, thirty years subsequent to 

 his first proposing the genus— is its plane seeds, those of his 



Wulf 



But of what use is the 



attempt to make of such diversities generic characters, 

 especially in the Scrophularinese? In Collinsia, in Antirr- 

 hinum, and even in Veronica— &iid in these genera as 

 accepted by Bentham himself— some species have plane seeds, 

 others seeds plano-convex and even concavo-convex. And 

 Asa Gray, seeing the weakness of Synthyris and yet not 

 being willing to abandon it, after its author had reasserted it 

 in the Genera Plantarum, makes mention in the Synoptical 

 Flora that in Wulfenia the anther-cells are confluent— in 

 Synthyris not so. But then, both these phases of the anther- 

 cells are present in Pentstemon as received by both Gray 

 and Bentham. In short, Wulfenia, including in it the 

 American species, is a genus far more natural and satisfac- 

 tory, exhibiting far less .diversity of habit and of character 

 than either Pentstemon or Veronica. The combination of 

 the two, Wulfenia and Synthyris, under the prior name, is 

 therefore logically inevitable and a scientific necessity. I 

 have long seen this, but only lately, in the Manual of the 

 Bay-Region Botany, have I given some expression of my 

 mind. The North American species I here attempt to 

 enumerate. 



1. W. rotundifolia. Synlhyris roiundifolia, Gray, Syn. 

 Fl. 285 (1878).— Oregon pine woods, along the Columbia and 

 Willamette rivers. 



