194 AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST. 
this is the least that can be done in the spirit of justice to 
science and of honest dealing with one's fellow botanists. In 
this way it is made easy for any student to consult the des- 
criptions of hypothecated or rejected species, and so he is 
helped to the means to form his own judgment about them. 
And the commendability of these bibliographie notes or cita- 
tions is all then more manifest in view of the certainty that, 
occupying no inconsiderable amount of space, the cost of print- 
ing the book has been increased, and the profits from the copy- 
right have been in the same ratio diminished. 
Men have already criticized, and will further complain of, 
the unevennesses and inconsistencies of this book ; the develop- 
ment of some of the plant families being according to the . 
latest and best results of careful research, while other groups 
are left in a sort of archaic statu quo. In the family of the 
borraginaceae, for example, there was a genus called by a 
barbarous name, Krynitzkia, and credited with 11 species, this 
according to the old Manual, which same group in the new 
consists of the three genera Allocarya, Cryptantha and Oreo- 
carya, with an aggregate of 33 species. By the same criteria, 
that is, by characters, both generic and specific that are of 
equal value, the genus Polygonum should have been resolved 
into the four genera of Polygonum, Persicaria, Bistorta and 
Bilderdykia, with increase of species nearly in proportion; 
yet the Polygonum of the new Manual differs from that of 
the old one in no respect except by the increase of the species 
. number of 16 in the earlier to 28 in the later edition. And 
while such perfectly natural and marked genera as Persicaria 
and the others are ignored, such comparatively feeble generic 
proposition as Anogra, Pachylophus, Lavauxia, Galpinsia and 
Sphaerostigma, artificial and questionable segregates from the 
old Oenothera are sustained in the new book ; and over against 
this rather forced segregation in the Onagraceae, there stands 
as of old the archaic and impossible genus Rhus of Linnaeus 
in the new volume, quite as in the old. Nevertheless, let no 
one who complains of these inequalities in the new Rocky 
Mountain Manual attribute them to that work as peculiarities. 
There are other books of the kind, too many of them, that 
have the same fault. : 
ave now, and almost all at once, also after long wait- 
ing, two highly serviceable octavos of Rocky Mountain syste- 
.matic botany. We have rejoiced and shall rejoice in both o 
them. Moreover, we shall be glad again, and more glad, per- 
haps, hen Dr. Rydberg’s long hoped for volume—or volumes 
—on the same great flora shall have appeared. 
ED 
oo | WARD L. GREENE. 
_ Washington, D. C. 
