290 CHENOPODIUM ALBUM, 
dinate variety. We find them so treated in the latest editions of 
Babington’s * Manual of British Botany,’ and of Hooker and Arnott's 
* British Flora. The third variety, distinctively named by several of the 
most active botanists of the present time, has been long partially re- 
cognized by our provincial collectors, and by some of them has been 
occasionally mislabelled fícifoliwm,—an error sufficient in itself to in- 
dicate that this third variety differs from those to which our provin- 
cial observers usually apply the names album ande viride. Possibly 
Mr. Bentham may have been misled by such mislabelled specimens ; 
for it is difficult otherwise to account for his union of Chenopodium 
ficifolium with C. album. 
In the third edition of *English Botany, Mr. Boswell-Syme dis- 
tinguishes the three varieties under the names of candicans, viride, 
paganum ; and these three names it will be convenient to adopt here. 
In the sixth edition of the * London Catalogue of British Plants,’ which 
was prepared for press before the appearance of those names in English 
Botany, the same varieties stand as candicans, viride, virens, some un- 
certainty being then still felt, whether the last was truly synonymous 
with the paganum of Continental botanists ; very likely it is so, and 
the two names virens and paganum, of English Botany and London 
Catalogue, may be regarded as literally synonymous. 
Thus, we now recognize one combinate or aggregate species, to 
which the Linnean name of C. album is made applicable, by enlarging 
its original application, so as to cover or include C. viride also. And 
we subdivide this aggregate album into three segregates, candicans, 
viride, paganum. The selection and application of the names is unfor- 
tunate, and it may be a fruitful source of error for some time to come. 
An adoption of the name album, to include white and green states of 
the aggregate species, has likely influenced our ideas so far as to make 
us treat candicans as the type of the natural species, and to regard the 
other two as varieties; but, looking to the plants themselves, as seen 
so abundantly in our fields and ways, candicans seems to be a state of 
paganum, more or less contracted in growth and depauperized by ste- 
rility of soil, or by any other condition which checks its full develop- 
ment ; paganum being truly the type-form of the species. We shall 
presently see the bearing of this remark on the alleged results of expe- 
riments, which have been made with a view of testing the constancy 
of the varieties. Meantime, the two experiments above alluded to 
should be first recorded. 
