Botany. 321 



-dition by boat to the islands of Lower California — there is a good 

 deal of reconstruction of old species, a large number of new ones, 

 and several new or restored genera of plants. Valuable as these 

 contributions to our botany must be, we suppose that more time for 

 elaboration, less confidence as to specific distinctions, and a more 

 restrained judgment about genera might have made them better. 

 Yet opinions will naturally differ in botany as well as upon other 

 subjects. The present writer, for one, would not willingly found 

 a genus upon an outlying plant which appears to differ from 

 Draba only in its late-dehiscent or possibly indehiscent silicle, and 

 another upon a wingless Thysanocarpus (which even Nuttall with 

 all the loose ideas of his later years about genera had no thought 

 of separating) ; still less would he have thought of a probable 

 junction of these two proposed genera into one upon a "half- 

 anticipation " of an unseen second ovule in the Thysanocarpus. 

 Nor would he accede to the restoration of Nuttall's genus 

 Eucrypta, nor readily believe that the genus Eschscholtzia com- 

 prises as many as ten definable species. As to Mimulus, although 

 Mr. Greene's discovery that the capsule of Diplacus dehisces first 

 and mainly by the upper suture certainly strengthens the claim 

 of the latter to generic rank, there are no new reasons for re- 

 instating Eunanus, nor for setting up M. pilosus (or M. exilis) as 

 a genus. On going over the whole ground anew, with all the 

 extant material, and with all the impartiality the present writer 

 can muster, he still is of the opinion that Mimulus is best treated 

 as a multiform genus. 



On the other hand there cannot be a better genus than Bebbia, 

 Greene (and our associate Mr. Bebb has well earned the honor) ; 

 and it is not Mr. Greene's fault nor that of Dr. Cooper (who both 

 long ago stated .that Carphephorus junceus, Benth., had yellow 

 flowers) that the genus had not already taken its place. If the 

 writer was slow of belief, with only the dried specimens before 

 him, he was at once convinced when he came upon this striking 

 plant, full of golden bloom, in the Grand Canon of the Colorado. 

 Our idea of the affinity of this genus, however, is quite unlike that 

 of Mr. Greene, and will in due time be recorded. Mr. Greene re- 

 fers to a "sunflower-like odor," apparently of the herbage; but he 

 makes no mention of what was to us a most attractive character- 

 istic, namely, the delicious aroma, like that of Acacia Famesiana, 

 which its blossoms exhale. a. g. 



3. A Systematic Catalogue of the Flowering Plants and Ferns 

 indigenous to or growing wild in Ceylon: Compiled by Henry 

 Trimen, M.B., F.L.S., Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, 

 Ceylon. Colombo, 1885. pp. 137, 8 vo. Separately issued from 

 the Journal of the Ceylon branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. — 

 Mi-. Trimen, the successor of the late Mr. Thwaites at the noted 

 and charmingly situated establishment at Peradeniya, has set 

 himself actively to the work of mastering the botany of Ceylon, 

 and has now brought out this catalogue of 1071 genera, phsenog- 

 amous and vascular cryptogamous, besides two of Characem, and 



