CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE SPECIES QUESTION 257 
tributed to the phytography of this genus, one only has the editor- 
ship been able to “reduce definitely to synonymy”, the other 
5 having been left wholly without mention. If it were an 
exceptional or isolated’ case of the treatment of my endeavors 
to improve the Manual region botany, I should freely accuse myself 
as an occasionally stupid phytographer; but instances of this 
kind of thing are so very numerous in the book that I begin to 
think there is another and still unnamed unscientific point of view, 
for which I have been considering the appropriateness of the desig- 
nation, The Clansman’s Aspect of the Species Question. I doubt 
however, about that name as sufficiently well devised. It may be 
too mild and lenient suitably to designate the invidiousness of 
that particular point of view. But the clannishness of two con- 
tending sets of American botanists has well been noted on the 
other side of the Atlantic; where also they themselves may be 
open to the same criticism. At home, I hope it may be coming 
to be recognized that we have one botanist, whose prominence 
before the entire world botanical, whose strong influence at home 
none will dispute except in whisperings behind his back, who openly 
and serenely defies the clanishness of both clans, conscious of power 
to stand, to dare and to do against the envy and the malice of the 
envious and malicious who abide among the kind and friendy in 
either clan. 
There is another genus named in the list above on the specific 
growth of which I can not forego brief remark. In the new book 
Panicum—taking the genus in that broader acceptation of it 
exemplified in the edition of 1889—has grown from 23 species to 
83. In nineteen years, then, 60 species have been added to it 
most of them new, and that is saying that the membership of this 
genus has been almost trebled within less than 20 years; and a 
noteworthy fact about it is, that only 15 species that have been 
described as new have been reduced to synonymv. 
This Panicum—a most critical and difficult genus—and the 82 
other genera of the grasses, have been prepared for the book by a 
contingent of the editorship which seems to have had grace to 
avoid party entanglements, and in its work does not evince 
distinct alliance with either clan. In the fulfilment of its task it 
does not seem to have been obliged to take for a moment the 
bibliopole aspect of the species question, and has been permitted to 
doits work in a spirit of candor and simplicity; the only spirit by 
