140 ERYTHEA. 
of earlier names of lower rank, 7. e., varietal; and I am not 
aware that a single line has yet been written in defense of 
this absurdity, Very likely this same committee upon the 
new catalogue are at agreement in giving sanction to this 
usage in their work. It should form a subject of discussion 
at the coming meeting of the Association; and doubtless it 
It is well that the chairman of the committee has put forth 
this circular; but it had been better that it should have con- 
tained some statement of the reasons which call, or in the 
minds of some may seem to call, for decapitalization in the 
writing of certain names; and in default of any appearance 
of such reasons, we are fain to think there are none, and that 
this movement is in the hands of mere fashion-makers. We 
therefore refrain, at present, from giving our arguments 
against any change or departure from the accepted usage in 
name-writing. It lies with the innovating party first to give 
their reasons for proposing the innovation. Perhaps they 
may be able to furnish them, and cogent ones; in which case 
most heartily, as we said before, shall we accede to the new 
proposition. We only want to be assured that it is not to be 
a change for the mere sake of change. 
SHORT ARTICLES. 
ON A VARIETY OF THE WesTERN Sumacu.—Among the low 
hills beyond the Valley of Berryessa in north-eastern Napa 
county, especially in the cafions and narrow strips of land 
bordering arroyos, are great quantities of Rhus bushes. For 
a distance of forty miles I found this Western Sumach to be 
by far the most prevalent of all shrubs. It was rarely sol- 
itary, usually growing in round clumps or sometimes forming 
rather extensive thickets seventy to one hundred feet in 
length and often ten feet in height. It is less abundant north- 
ward, and in the Vaca Mountains, many miles southward, it 
is a rare bush barely two feet in height. Everywhere, how- 
