170 THE AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST 
- 
National Herbarium,” while “species reported but not sup- 
ported by specimens have been mentioned in notes.” And 
these “notes” refer to some foot-notes, where titles and 
authors are given of papers previously published on the Flora 
in question. Thus the fate of most of the interesting species 
which: have been collected in the District, but which “have 
not been presented to the National Herbarium,” is unequivocal 
—they have been wilfully ignored. And this is not the first 
time that such procedure has been adopted and approved by 
the Smithsonian Institution; in these same Contributions 
from the National Museum, Vol. 15, 1910, we have a mono- 
eraph of Panicum, where a similar discourtesy has been 
awarded for failing to supply the National Herbarium with 
specimens. \ 
Let us now examine the merits of the keys, which accord- 
ing to Mr. Coville, (1. ¢.)@ enable persons with almost no 
knowledge of botany to trace a strange plant to its proper 
family. These keys, we are told, are based mainly on vegeta- 
tive characters, but these characters do not include the num- 
erous and very important structures of the subterranean or- 
gans, nor of the inflorescences; the foliage is the only one, 
which has been considered. Although the description of the 
leaves would have been a very simple matter to handle, it is - 
readily to be seen that it must have been more than trouble- 
some to the authors. For by looking through the keys we 
notice at a first glance that the authors were unable to dis- 
tinguish between leaf and leaflet, and between leaflet and seg- 
ment; even the outline of simple leaves has been misunder- 
stood. The reader will see, for instance, on page 22, how the 
Fabaceae and Parthenocissus are distinguished: ‘‘Leaves of 
3 or 5 digitate leaflets,” “leaflets 3 entire’ (Fab.), and “leaf- 
lets 5, toothed”’ (Parthenoc). What is really meant by a leaf- 
let being digitate and at the same time entire seems conjec- 
tural. We observe the same misinterpretation on page 30, 
where the leaf of Cannabis is called “leaf of 5-7 digitate leaf- 
lets,” and ‘‘leaves with 5-7 palmate equal leaflets” are credited 
to the Capparidaceae. When Linné, some two hundred years 
ago, described Cannabis and Cleome, he wrote: “foliis digi- 
tatis,’ and so they have been called ever since until the 
publication of the present Flora. Then with respect to leaf- 
