6 Muhlenbergia, Volume 6 



Utah, northern Arizona, &c, coll. Dr. E. Palmer, 1877;" "Cali- 

 fornia, Douglas." 



There is some excuse for the earlier imperfect data, when 

 the country was less known than now, but there were always 

 some towns, mountains, or rivers, near enough to approximately 

 designate the place of collection. Among the more recent col- 

 lections are labels reading "Kootenai county, Idaho," with the 

 year and month of collection, which is quite an improvement 

 over some of the older ones, but Kootenai county, Idaho, could 

 swallow the whole of the state of Rhode Island and feel very 

 empty indeed; so there is still much lacking in this record. 



At the present time a fairly complete record indicates the 

 state, the county, the precise place in the county as near as one 

 can get at it, the year, month, day of the month, and altitude 

 above sea level. All these things are necessary, and can be put 

 upon a label of neat and convenient size. But even such infor- 

 mation, complete as it may seem as compared with early records, 

 is far from perfection. In some cases it is important to know 

 the time of day when a given species is found in bloom. And 

 since the study of ecology has assumed such important propor- 

 tions, one must needs know the character of the soil, the expos- 

 ure, the various plants which grow in company, and other things 

 which our forefathers never considered at all. 



In former days it was considered sufficient when describing 

 a plant, if more than one specimen of a supposedly single spe- 

 cies was at hand, to merely give the range. Now the record is 

 not complete unless a certain definite specimen is cited as the 

 type. 



All this may seem far removed from the subject, "The first 

 Spring Flower," but is introduced to show the value of accurate 

 and complete records. lucked, the weather man could acquire 

 much valuable information by studying a carefully kept record 

 of the plants of any given locality. 



The very first plant to come into bloom in the vicinity of 

 Reno is Ranunculus glaberrimus Hook. The earliest date upon 

 which it has been found in bloom is January 5th, when it was 

 brought in by Miss Lewers, a member of the faculty of the I T ni- 



