SPECIES-MAKING .AT SECOND-HAND 175 



But excessive or ignorant species-making is to be dealt 

 with relentlessly, especially when made at second-hand, as in 

 a given case by Montagne, resting himself upon the supposed 

 infallibility of a certain observer. And he adds : 



My dear friend, I want no enlightenment or refresh- 

 ment about Ballia Hombroniana ; I examined them native 

 hundreds of times ; it is one of the most common southern 

 Algae, and I often tried if that state was a different species ; 

 Brown would not make me believe it a good one. 



I shall give Montagne a rap over the knuckles if he does 

 not look out ; we are not all fools because he is so double- 

 barrelled knowing ; it is childish of him to insist against the 

 testimony we have and which he has no grounds whatever 

 to disprove ; it is silly of him to adduce as an argument 

 that an unbotanical man pronounced them distinct. 1 



Against Montagne there was another score to be chalked 

 up. He was bringing out a book on the Algae himself, and 

 Hooker had sent him a copy of his best plate of Alga drawings. 

 With this Montagne was so much delighted that he promptly 

 incorporated it in his book, a most undesirable form of com- 

 pliment. To Harvey, who was much upset by the incident, 

 Hooker writes : 



With regard to your cher confrere, I have had a hearty 

 laugh at your distress. I am wholly to blame for being so 

 weak as to send him it ; feeling as I did at the time how 

 dangerous a thing I was doing. . . . However, I try to 

 laugh off my disappointment at being chiselled so dirtily 

 out of my pet plate amongst the Algae. Confound his 



1 A little later, the same point is amusingly exemplified in the description 

 of Planchon, the Kew assistant, given to Bentham, September 25, 1846 : 



* Planchon thrives, i.e. grows leaner and looks yellower and hungrier. He 

 is getting up his geography with a vengeance, and now no two plants can be 

 the same, if gathered two miles apart : he is hammering away at the Compositae 

 splendidly, and after having abused D. C. for making infinitely too many 

 species on other genera he now wants to make more of Senecio ! even of the 

 S. American, all except the Antarctic of which he says I have made too 

 many. There never was such a compound of contradictions. I benefited 

 enormously by his views and " 9a tourhe's " on genera and orders, but on 

 species he fairly drives me mad. We are capital friends, however, only bicker 

 a bit. He is now trying to get some friend's picture of a water-lily exhibited 

 at the R.A. next year ; I tell him he might as well try to get himself into the 

 Book of Beauty.' Cp. p. 344. 



