266 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
and great generalizing powers are supplemented by clear treat- 
ment, orderly arrangement, and judicial fairness in the discussion 
ofall matters of theory ; in which, further, the author has evi- 
dently given to the illustrations the same care he has bestowed 
upon the text—a rare virtue in the writer of a text-book. 
Those who wish to form some slight estimate of the loss his 
death has been to his friends and to Cambridge, should read Dr. 
Foster’s article in “ Nature,” or the “ British Medical Journal,” or 
Mr. J. W. Clark’s in the “ Academy.” I, who knew him, alas, 
but slightly, feel rather as if I had lost a dear friend. I never 
had an acquaintance whom I so desired to know intimately ; 
never a contemporary for whom I felt such veneration. He was 
almost the only man of whom I never heard a disparaging re- 
mark. Everyone seemed to feel that there was something in 
Balfour which raised him far above the men with whom he would 
naturally be compared. He was a man for whom another 
“In Memoriam” might well be written. 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
MR. BUCHANAN’S CRITICISMS. 
SIR,—I must request you to allow me space for a reply to 
the remarkable assertions of Mr. Buchanan, at p. 182 of your 
last issue. 
Agrostis muscotdes. 
I described this species in Vol. XIII., Trans. N.Z. Inst., p. 
385, and pointed out that Mr. Buchanan had confused it with 
A. subulata, Hook f., a very different plant. Mr. Buchanan does 
not explicitly deny having fallen into this error, but states, “ it is 
evident that Mr. Kirk has missed the intention of Hooker to 
abandon this antarctic grass as a species, having proved it to be 
only a variety of A. mueller.’ He further adds, “the specific 
name subulata being thus open to use was adopted in the ‘ Hand- 
book of N.Z. Flora’ as Agvostis canina var. subulata.” The last 
sentence is substantially correct ; but most unfortunately for Mr. 
Buchanan’s view of the case it does not apply to A. muelleri, as 
his statement would lead one to believe, but to the original 
A. subulata. There is not the slightest evidence of any intention 
on the part of Sir Joseph Hooker to regard A. subulata as a variety 
of A. muelleri. On the contrary, the two plants are kept distinct 
as varieties, which may possess claim to specific rank. In fact 
the true A. subulata differs from A. muelleyi to a much greater ex- 
tent than that species differs from A. canina, It is evident that 
Mr. Buchanan has never seen the true A. subulata, and is not 
aware that it is found in the South Island. 
It is singular that Mr. Buchanan makes no mention of this 
supposed intention of Sir Joseph Hooker to regard A. subulata as 
