Mat 25, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



805 



their observations; and this is the frame- 

 work over which the whole tissue of Amer- 

 ican botany is spread. A remarkable fea- 

 ture of all this is that any plant from any 

 region can always be crowded in under 

 some name found in the pages of the man- 

 ual, or the six- or eight-line descriptions 

 can always be interpreted so as to cover 

 any plant. I have sent four specimens cut 

 from the same bush to four reputable bot- 

 anists and received four different names 

 for my plant — names not followed by any 

 question mark either! Three would have 

 involved me in serious error in any future 

 publication. Little wonder that those 

 workers who have been brought up on the 

 manual and never weaned to anything 

 better should be thrown into confusion and 

 consternation when the monographer— the 

 indispensable pioneer in systematic botany 

 — describes a whole grist of 'new species' 

 among plants of his locality, well known to 

 him. Personally, and as throwing light on 

 my point of view, it may be remarked that 

 I have never yet gotten up courage to de- 

 pend upon the majority of determinations 

 made from the manuals. My only point 

 of departure has become an actual speci- 

 men which has been compared with the 

 type, or passed upon by some careful phy- 

 tographer who is familiar with the type. 

 In the whole chaotic and discouraging con- 

 dition, there is but one reasonable, safe and 

 sure thing to tie to, and that is the type 

 specimen. Specimens collected' by botan- 

 ists all over the country, and determined 

 by the most careful and conscientious 

 manual methods, quite commonly and nat- 

 urally gravitate into the great herbaria. 

 If any one needs an eye-opener to awaken 

 him to the condition of American system- 

 atic botany to-day, let. him go to one of 

 these herbaria and pull down at random 

 almost any species cover containing twenty- 

 five or more sheets from various parts of 



the country. If he had previously thor- 

 oughly learned his own flora with manual 

 in hand, he is now both shocked and dis- 

 tressed to find that the plant he has gath- 

 ered so many ecological data concerning ia 

 not at all the same that X. in his region had 

 written about, too, and he remembers scor- 

 ing X. as an incompetent and careless ob- 

 server. He pulls down another species 

 cover and there stares him in the face the 

 unmistakable fact that in his famous con- 

 troversy with M. over the embryology of 

 this other plant that, alas! he and M. did 

 not really have the same plant in hand; 

 and he blushes a little when he finds that 

 neither he nor M. had the plant to which 

 the name they had used was originally 

 given. Were I to make ecological, or his- 

 tological, or embryological studies or to pub- 

 lish a floral list, I think I should prepare 

 about thirty to fifty good herbarium speci- 

 mens of the plant form or forms in ques- 

 tion, and send them to all the great herbaria 

 under a uniform set of numbers and notes ; 

 and then a good label for the studies would 

 be, for instance: 'Embryology of Physalis 

 No. 250— perhaps laneeolata— deposited by 

 me in all the greater herbaria.' Then 

 might the various 'lumpers' and 'splitters' 

 call it anything they pleased— it would still 

 remain my No. 250, and the whole world 

 could know unquestionably the exact form 

 to which my studies referred. Such a plan 

 would be infinitely more scientific than to 

 use unquestioned some more or less ques- 

 tionable name from the manuals — as is 

 usually done. We should at least be spared 

 the spectacle furnished us in a recent bo- 

 tanical publication where, in embryological 

 work, one investigator questions another's 

 determination of Cucurbita pepo. 



As it is, a vast number of the published 

 records, observations and studies of plants 

 in American Literature are so much wasted 

 printer's ink, except for the most general 



