466 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [JUNE 
So long as my own field observations on Botrychium were. confined to 
central New York and New England, I regarded all the forms that there 
appear as running into each other and so discarded the “ varieties’’ as 
trivial. I had never, indeed, until last season seen in the field the genuine 
form that Sprengel long ago described as Botrychium dissectum, a type that 
sixteen years of collecting in New England, and a large array of material 
from all parts of that territory, has not revealed as a New England form. 
Mr. Davenport’s statement that it is a common New England form only 
reveals the fact that he is confusing with it a very different plant which zs 
common in New England and elsewhere, but has little in common with the 
genuine dissectum. Had I experienced the misfortune to have my field work 
confined to eastern Massachusetts I might even yet be holding Mr, Daven- 
port’s ultra conservative notions. As it is, I believe now that while the evi- 
dence is not all in, the present indications are that Prantl’s arrangement of 
the American species is far more logical than any other arrangement that has 
yet appeared, and that we have in America in the erzatum group a series of 
species even more distinct when rightly understood than the species of that 
other closely allied group that Baker so unceremoniously and illogically 
places under the aggregate “Botrychium rutaceum Swz.”’5 1 am anticipat- 
ing the pleasure of soon going over the evidence at Kew and the types at 
Paris, and shall hope that a still wider range of data will help us to arrive at 
a better understanding of the genus. 
It is unnecessary to discuss further Mr. Davenport’s position, for his mind 
was fully made up in advance, since he wrote me some time ago that “ Milde 
had said the last word on Botrychium, as though any problem of taxonomy 
could be settled by an appeal to “authority,” and before the evidence was 
all in.— Lucien M. UNDERWOOD, Columbia University. 
COLOR IN PLANTS. 
To the Editors of the Botanical Gazette :—In your issue of January 1897 
there is a notice of Professor Wittrock’s studies on the history and origin of 
_ the garden pansy, at the conclusion of which is the following pregnant sen- 
tence, viz.: “If the pollinating insects prove to be color-blind, as is claimed 
now by certain physiologists, the yellow eye, as well as all floral coloration, 
will need a new explanation.” 
LT venture to point out that such a new explanation is suggested in an 
: article. entitled “ Organic color, ” which appeared in Science, June 16, 1893, 
ed in New York. If any scientist who feels interested in the subject 
ee would consider and criticise that paper a usetul discussion might ensue.—F. 
a ve ‘Morr, Crescent louse, Leicester, England. 
siti is worth noting that recent European monographers follow Prantl in separat- 
: Ing the Enropean species (B rutifolivm) from th the ‘ernatum muddle in which Milde 
ORE (la 
