164 The Botanical Gazette. [April, 
ment, or whether albinos shall be treated as forms or as 
varieties, all these are proper matters for the expression of 
opinion and argument. I know that the committee would 
have been grateful and would still be grateful to Dr. Robin- 
son or any other botanist for useful suggestions on these mat- 
ters, and that all communications of this kind would receive 
fair hearing and sober judgment. 
For the errors of citation which Dr. Robinson has pointed 
out it is hardly necessary to apologize. Those who have sys- 
tematically verified by consultation of original sources of pub- 
lication all the page and plate references in any group of 
plants of even moderate size, will appreciate the enormity of 
the task that devolved upon the committee in dealing with 
more than 10,000 references, ninety-eight per cent. of which 
were finally verified. But all errors in the book will be recti- 
fied hereafter, and while the few that now occur may be 
temporarily annoying to the botanist who uses the list, they 
have nothing to do with the principles themselves. 
With reference to Dr. Robinson’s criticism that the check- 
list differs from current standards in its conception of genera 
and species, I wish again to point out that, while the check- 
list is more nearly in accord with the highest recognised au- 
thority, Engler and Prantl’s Natiirlichen Pllanzenfamilien, than 
is any local or general descriptive American work, this fact 
has nothing to do with any system of nomenclature whatever 
and is not used justly as an argument in this case. Nor has 
the committee offered this treatment of genera and species as 
representing their combined judgment, for the contributor of 
each family is specifically and designedly named. The con- 
tributor is responsible for the matter, the committee for its 
presentation in properform underthe principles adopted by the 
club. Whether Astragalus and Phaca shall betreated as distinct 
genera as most European botanists treat them, or whether 
they shall be thrown into one, as most American botanists 
have held heretofore, is a question on which the contributor 
of the Leguminose, not the committee, has expressed an 
opinion. But all this aside, the disagreement between the 
contributors and Engler and Prantl are exceedingly few. _ 
I must correct one lamentable error into which Dr. Robin- 
son has fallen through a misinterpretation of one of the fun- 
damental principles of the new system. He says (p. 101): 
