Igor | BRIEFER ARTICLES 367 
today where individual members of the Check List committee will stand 
tomorrow. ‘They have forgotten or ignored the fact that the Roches- 
ter Code was to give us permanent names. They have made of it a 
“personal preference hit-or-miss system.” In the words of one of 
their number, they are “openly at war with their own rules.” Is this 
uniformity ? Is this “the day of law”? Is this the high road to a 
stable nomenclature ? 
Do we sincerely want uniformity, or do we prefer the tangled 
results of individual interpretation ? If the former ideal still appeals 
to us, why not abandon this restless pursuit of the will-o’-the-wisp ? 
Why not honestly test the combined Berlin rule for genera and Kew 
rule for species? None of their opponents have given them a fair 
trial. Until they do can they really judge of their merits ?—M. L. 
FERNALD, Gray Herbarium, June, 1901. 
FLOWER VISITS OF OLIGOTROPIC BEES. III. 
Amonc the oligotropic bees mentioned in BoranicaL GAZETTE 28: 
36, 215, and 30: 130, should be included: Andrena krigtana, which 
collects its pollen from Xvigia amplexicaulis; Entechnia taurea, 
which is an oligotropic visitor of Jpomoca pandurata: and Anthedon 
compta, which gets its pollen exclusively from Oe¢nothera biennis. 
Species of Melissodes, which usually collect the fine pollen of 
Compositae, have their scopae dense and quite closely plumose. On 
the other hand, Emphor, Xenoglossa and Entechnia, which collect 
the large pollen grains of Aidiscus lasiocarpus, Cucurbita pepo, and 
Lpomoea pandurata, have their scopae quite loose and thinly plumose. 
The close relationship of Anthedon to Melissodes, and the fact that 
the male has quite plumose hairs on his hind tibiae, show that the 
Scopae of the female have recently lost the barbs and have come to be 
composed of simple bristles. I have wondered why this was 0, and 
have expected to find some peculiarity in the pollen which the bee 
collects. Now in Oenothera biennis the pollen grains are large, tri- 
lobed, and connected by cobwebby threads. This condition of the 
pollen makes the barbs unnecessary if they would not greatly interfere 
with the collection of this kind of pollen. 
Andrena nasonit, mentioned in the first list, is not oligotropic. 
In the Fertilization of Flowers, p. 570, in discussing -— effect of 
conspicuousness of flowers in inducing insect visits, Miiller says: 
