360 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [| NOVEMBER 
Mr. Pollard quotes from my article certain sentences embodying 
conclusions which he characterizes as misleading. The conclusions 
thus referred to were to the effect that in 1900 Professor Underwood, 
following logically and consistently the Rochester Code, used 25 per 
cent. of names different from those used by him in 1896, when he like- 
wise asserted that he was following the Rochester Code. Mr. Pollard’s 
contention is that this fact does not afford a proper basis for criticism 
of the Rochester Code, because most of the changes made by Professor 
Underwood represent very recent segregations among the ferns, com- 
parable with the divisions made within three years in the genus Anten- 
naria. Yet it does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Pollard that, in 
omitting the footnote to the paragraph quoted, he is possibly mislead- 
ing that large body of readers who habitually neglect to verify quotations 
and references. Had he carefully read and quoted the two sentences 
as they were originally published with the footnote: ‘The true ferns 
alone are here considered, and the genus Botrychium is purposely 
omitted, since that genus has been subdivided by Professor Underwood 
to such an extent that comparative figures would have little definite 
significance,” he would have found it unnecessary to inquire whether 
I do not “recognize the necessity for occasional segregations.”’ Every 
working systematist must recognize such necessity ; but the segregation 
of perplexing polymorphous types is a very different thing from the 
raking up of older and more or less obscure appellations for plants the 
names of which have long been established. The latter is a nomen- 
clatorial matter, the former botanical; and if anyone has read into my 
previous remarks the least opposition to such division of confused 
groups as shall lead to a clearer understanding of the forms, he has 
found that which [ in no way intended. 
But most of the ferns under discussion cannot be placed by Mr. 
Pollard under the same category as the recent segregates of Antennaria 
(and likewise Botrychium), for they do not represent new points of view 
unknown in 1896. Matteuccia is a name given in 1866 to Willdenow’s 
Struthiopteris, which was segregated in 1809 from Osmunda; our 
Dennstaedtia was separated from Dicksonia in 1857; Filix was pub- 
lished by Adanson in his well known Famille des Plantes in 17633 
Phyllitis was re-distinguished in 1844; and it is certainly not a new 
idea to treat species of the complex genus Aspidium under the name 
Polystichum. Neither are Phegopteris Robertiana and Notholaena dealbata 
now treated as species for the first time. The former was published 
