(258 ) 
lows of the eastern United States, and especially with those 
species grown by him in his garden. Judging, however, from 
the way he has determined the willows of British America 
and the Rockies, in our herbaria, I do not think that I do 
him an injustice, if I say that he had not the very best con- 
ception of these species.* His conception of .S. axglorum 
(S. Brown Lundts., S. arctica R. Br., not Pall.) was, for 
example, so broad that nearly any cespitose willows with cat- 
kins borne on short leafy branches, brown or fuscous obovate 
bracts and tomentose capsules with an evident style were in- 
cluded under that species. Specimens of nine or ten of the 
forms treated as species below, have been named SS. arctica 
. Brownit, S. arctica var. petraca or S. Browni 
var. petraca by Mr. Bebb. But this is not the only species. 
S. desertorum and 5S. reticulata, as understood by him, con- 
sist, in my opinion, of at least three species each. I can 
easily understand the reason for Mr. Bebb’s position in this 
respect. He was not acquainted with these species in their 
natural habitat, and belonged to the older class of botanists 
who did not admit as specific those characters, which must 
be taken in consideration in a genus such as Sew. If char- 
acters generally accepted as good by European salicologists 
should be applied to American species, I think that the num- 
ber of our native species of willows would be doubled. I 
have here endeavored to apply them to the cespitose willows 
of Arctic America and the Rockies. The reasons for my 
publishing onthe genus Sa//xv are the following: 1. I have 
a knowledge of several of them from field study and had to 
work up some for an annotated catalogue of the flora of Mon- 
tana, now inpress. 2. I have at least a superficial knowledge 
of many from British America from the collections sent me 
by Professor Macoun. 3. I think that it will aid Professor 
Rowlee of Cornell University in his monographing of the wil- 
lows, if he has the opinions of others on certain species. 
* Professor John Macoun and his son and assistant, ie M. Macoun, have 
both expressed their dissatisfaction with the naming of the species in the 
Herbarium of the Geological Survey of Canada. 
