I04 



the north-west coast is rather vague, but Smith, under his description of /?. 

 stamineum says it was "gathered by Mr. Menzies in CaHfomia." It was un- 

 doubtedly collected at Monterejf, where it is abundant on hillsides, and is not 

 known to occur north of that place, but ranges southward from there to Lower 

 California. 



Those who are inclined to criticise should bear in mind that this is not a 

 monograph of the members of the genus Ribes in California. It is merely the 

 bringing together in compact form the work of others, and no claim is made as 

 to the completeness of the work; the writer is even now fully convinced that 

 his own limited collection still contains at least two undescribed species, but 

 did not come to this conclusion until too late to include them in their proper 

 place. The paper has indeed quite outgrown its original limits, for the intention 

 was merely to print an annotated list of the known species with a key, the key 

 being the main object of the undertaking. Many large genera are almost totally 

 confined to the Rocky mountains and regions westward, and the number of 

 species is being added to continually, usually with no attempt at corellation and 

 sometimes with no hint as to the relationship of the newly described species. 

 As this vast region, with the exception of several local floras, has never been fully 

 covered in recent years, there is much to embarass the worker within its limits. 

 Of the floras, local and otherwise which more or less cover this region, there is 

 but a single lone example of the use of a modern key throughout, and that is in 

 Jepson's Flora of Middle Western California. Abram's recently issued Flora 

 of Los Angeles and Vicinity, is a distinct disappointment in that respect, for 

 instead of keys which definitely place each species, one must laboriously read 

 over the descriptions of a number of species in the larger genera in order to place 

 some particular species. 



It is to be hoped that more revisions of genera with modern keys will ap- 

 pear in the near future, or if the time is not ripe for revisions, at least ke3-s to 

 known species. The writer hopes to do some small part of this necessary' work, 

 and the present paper is the first of the series. 



