450 III. SEGREGATES AND 
4—5 pairs in sambucifolia. This difference prevails, but is far 
from constant; it being no unusual thing to see plants of sambuci- 
folia with six pairs of leaflets, and others of officinalis with only 
five or six. And as the less numerous leaflets are usually wider 
and more serrate, the two chief differences almost disappear in 
many instances; for flowers, fruits, and stolons are the same 
in both. 
The change in the ‘Manual’ was in truth only repeating in 
a topsy-turvy manner the distinctions made of old by Dillenius, 
Hudson, Withering, Smith, and Gray; converting their second 
species or variety into the type, and their type into the variety ; 
disguising the real character of the change by help of the new 
foreign name sambucifolia. Much inconvenience and confusion 
were sure to arise through an unnecessary exchange of names 
such as this. The localities of the old type (renamed sambucifolia) 
are fifty times more numerous in Britain, and consequently that 
usual form represented V. officinalis in most of our herbariums, 
and had been figured for it rightly in ‘English Botany.’ Thus, 
when botanists were told ‘of a supposed second species, under 
the new name of sambucifolia, they compared specimens of this 
imagined novelty with specimens of the same thing under its old 
name officinalis. Of course, they were only mystified by an 
attempt to enlighten them, which was so badly carried out. The 
matter has remained in this confused condition in the ‘Manual’ 
up to its latest or sixth edition ; very likely, it has so remained 
because the Author of the book has never yet clearly understood 
his own handiwork. Even the same misleading notice as to 
situation of growth has been regularly repeated. Notwithstanding 
the differences more correctly indicated in ‘ English Flora’ two 
score years ago, and even intimated by the mere names 
( aquatica” and “ montana”) used in Ray’s Synopsis, edition 
third, we have this information substituted in the ‘ Manual’ :-— 
V. officinalis. “ Ditches and damp chalky places.” 
V. sambucifolia. ‘“ Damp places.” 
So that, as far as any difference of site is expressed by these 
words, students are told that it is the broad-leaved form, the one 
