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TORREYA 



Vol. 19 No. g 



October, 1919 



NOTES ON THE GRASSES OF HOWELL'S FLORA OF 

 NORTHWEST AMERICA 



By James C. Nelson 



Every student who makes a serious attempt to become familiar 

 with the flora of Washington or Oregon, must acknowledge his 

 obligation to the great work of Thomas Howell. The adjective 

 is used advisedly. When we take into account the author's 

 lack of scientific training, the very limited herbarium and library 

 resources at his command, the scarcity of congenial associates, 

 and the constant financial burdens under which he labored, and 

 then observe the total of species and forms which he was able to 

 recognize, the number of new species which he published, the 

 keenness of his observation and the soundness of his critical 

 judgment, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that' here was a 

 scientist who with better preparation and under a more favor- 

 able environment would have been worthy of rank with John 

 Torrey or Asa Gray. With all its inevitable defects, his Flora 

 must remain a land-mark in the history of Western botany, and 

 the essential soundness of his fundamental conclusions is being 

 vindicated daily. Nor do we detract in any way from the value 

 of his work, or cast any aspersion on his scientific conscience, 

 when we venture to point out that the Flora has from the be- 

 ginning been in need of revision, and has in many respects be- 

 come almost obsolete since its publication in 1893. Howell 

 himself, had he lived, would have taken full account of the 

 advances in botanical knowledge, and would have been the 

 first to suggest a revision of his Flora. 



In the course of an attempt to become familiar with the grasses 

 of Oregon, particularly of that part of the state included in the 



[No. 9, Vol. 19 of ToRREVA, comprising pp. 161-185, was issued October 28, 1919.] 



187 



