528 44. COMPOSITE. 
species which had not been treated in the Synopsis. There still 
remain the thirty odd species of Mr. Backhouse’s elaborate Mono- 
graph ; the majority of which were not noticed segregately in the 
Synopsis, or were absolutely unnoticed there. But it is impossible 
to disregard a treatise so sedulously worked out, and from the pen 
of a botanist much more familiar with the genus in question, than 
is any other English describer of plants. The great difficulty in 
using that Monograph, is, that nobody could possibly name his 
specimens by it; there must be the further aid also of examples 
already labelled by Mr. Backhouse himself, or through direct com- 
parison with other individual specimens so labelled.. I cannot 
doubt that several of the so-called “species” are optional and 
arbitrary ; that the forms are associated (‘fagotted”) into species, 
or separated into species, and named accordingly, by the will of a 
Backhouse or a Fries, and not by anything more real in nature. 
For example, Mr. Backhouse arbitrarily restricts the old Linnean 
name “alpinum” to a segregate which is comparatively of rare 
occurrence in this country, and is not specially or exclusively the 
alpinum of any preceding author. Dr. Boswell Syme, endowed 
with a better appreciation of Science, its ends and means, writes 
thus in English Botany ;—“I have adopted the name H. melano- 
cephalum (Tausch.), which doubtless belongs to this fort, instead of 
restricting the name of H. alpinum to this aberrant member of the 
group. There is no custom which has introduced greater con- 
fusion than that of applying the name properly belonging to a 
whole series of forms to one of its parts only ;—where this has 
been done, and generally received by botanists, of course such 
names ought to be retained, as they do not lead to confusion ; but, 
in the present case, it is only two or three British authors who use 
H. alpinum in the sense intended by Mr. Backhouse; so that their 
H. alpinum does not represent the H. alpinum of continental 
authors”; E. B. v. 172. This is sound and clear; but why not 
acted on in the case of Ranunculus heterophyllus? (See page 429 
of the present volume). In the subjoined list of names from the 
work of Mr. Backhouse, his own recorded localities, those of 
English Botany, those on labels in my herbarium, with some very 
few other additions, are condensed into their corresponding 
provincial nos. 
Hieracium. 
3 alpinum 15 16 
4 holosericeum 12 15 16 
5 eximium 15 16 
b. tenellum - 15 16 
6 calenduliflorum - - - - 15 
7 gracilentum - 15 
8 globosum - 15 
9 nigrescens - 15 16 
