438 III. SEGREGATES AND 
bringing its localities under the formula in any other way. It 
must shortly be noticed in partition, as four or five segregate 
species of the ‘Manual’ and ‘ English Botany,’ little as can yet be 
shewn about their areas or distribution when taken singly, apart 
from each other. In books it has been treated as one species, — 
then divided into two species, —then re-united into a single 
species, — then re-divided into two other species, not the same 
as the former two, —then further divided into four species, these 
reduced to three, and again expanded into four species, in rapid 
succession. At length, the old specific name minus (always 
retained for one or other of the fragments) has thus ceased to 
have any precise significance or fixed applieation, unless when 
used for the four-fold totality or old aggregate species ; the manner 
in which it is applied in Bentham’s ‘Handbook’ before quoted, 
and on page 79 of this volume. 
In the ‘Synopsis’ of Ray the plant in question was entered as 
two species, namely, Thalictrum minus and Thalictrum montanum 
minus foliis latioribus. These two were still kept up in the third 
edition of Ray’s work, by Dillenius; but they were accompanied 
by a note, on the testimony of Richardson, stating that culture in 
the garden had proved the two identical. This was virtually 
reducing the two into one species; and accordingly we find them 
so treated in the ‘Flora Anglica’ by Hudson, who there places 
the montanum as a variety of the Linnean minus. 
In the ‘Flora Britannica’ and in the ‘English Flora,’ as in 
various other works based on those Floras of Smith, a two-fold 
division of this aggregate was again made, namely, into minus and 
majus ; the species in this new dual division not corresponding 
with those in Ray’s dual division, for Smith imitates Hudson in 
placing the montanum as a variety of minus, disconnecting his 
own majus from them. While this division by Smith served 
passably well for distinction in most instances, it naturally led 
botanists to look to size as a chief difference between the species ; 
thus doubts would arise occasionally as to which of the two names 
was most applicable, whether an individual example was large 
enough to be majus, or small enough to remain minus. And 
