CERTAIN ASPECTS. OF THE SPECIES QUESTION 255 
every proposed new species for a certain large area must appear 
as for trial before it can be allowed to pass as valid. Though 
possibly good enough, unless approved by this tribunal, the faithful 
and discreet among botanists will not admit its validity, and must 
treat it as non-existent. 
Of course, this kind of assumption—presumption, rather—is 
no new thing. There is another self-constituted tribunal of the 
same pretentions in New York, and this one, from certain points 
of view has better claims to being considered seriously. The 
members of its judiciary are much more experienced in everything 
relating to taxonomy. Only a moment ago we were taking note 
of the fact that New York, as reported by the symposium reporter, 
had in so far canvassed the species question as to be able to offer 
at least a rough estimate of the numerical proportion of recent 
species that might be suppressed; and, considering everything, that 
is no more startling than the statement of the New England judici- 
aries, that they, at whatever expenditure of time, and delay of pub- 
lication, have been able to examine the data, and to decide upon 
the “merits” of most of “these new propositions,” and with the 
result that only "in a few instances," and by lack of satisfactory 
data, have they failed to attain to sound conclusions as to the 
validity or invalidity of them. And that which to many a mind 
must seem extraordinary is, that in the cases of certain genera 
that have been most extremely enlarged by accession of new 
propositions, they have found the smallest number to discount- 
enance, even often next to nothing to reduce or suppress. Their 
treatment of Sisyrinchium is apposite; for from a genus of 1 
species in the edition of 1848, it had increased to one of 2 species 
in that of 41 years later; then in the space of hardly more than 
IO years before the edition of 1908, it had acquired, in the opinion 
of our New Manual editors, as many as 11 more, making an aggre- 
gate of 13. For my own part, after thirty years or more of botanical 
travel and sojourning east and west, with frequent close inspection 
of members of this genus everywhere, and after the publication 
of a number of western and southwestern species, I should not have 
doubted about the possible, or probable, existence of even more 
13 species for this Gray's Manual region. As long ago as 
1868, on the prairies of central Illinois, I came to realize the prefect 
validity of S. albidum, now of late “restored; and in 1869, when my 
correspondence with Asa Gray began, I realized the utter futility 
