—5i— 



Some of the above species are surely well founded, and it is 

 quite as probable that some of them cover species already de- 

 scribed. At any rate there ought to be careful study and collec- 

 tion of the plants of this genus in the field by fern students who 

 reside or travel from the Rocky Mountain region westward. The 

 remaining sixteen species recognized by Dr. Hieronymus are 

 widely distributed in Asia, Africa, Mexico, and South America, 

 and all were included in Mr. Baker's conception of Selaginella 

 rupestris, for the Kew collection is more comprehensive than the 

 one at Berlin. 



Another line of difference of opinion is forcibly suggested by 

 Mr. Davenport in the April Bulletin. To a stranger, it would 

 appear from his article that he had seen the only European Bo- 

 trychium matricaricefolium that American eyes had rested upon, 

 and that "my own conclusions were the result of rash youthful 

 impulse based on "mere geographical differences" alone. While 

 I have great respect for Mr. Davenport's critical judgment, he 

 will doubtless admit that something depends on a study of a 

 wide range of material, and in respect to opportunities for seeing 

 these species in field and herbarium, others have been more 

 favored than himself. 



I first met the plant in question in 1876 where a large quantity 

 of it grew in a maple grove some five miles north of the village 

 of Herkimer, New York, in close proximity to a similar quantity 

 of Botrychium lanceolatum. Boy though I was, I saw clearly 

 that there were two things {i.e. two species), for I had abundance 

 of material at hand — the one plant just maturing, the other just 

 past its season of spore production— and sent some specimens to 

 Dr. Gray at Cambridge, the great "authority" then in all things 

 botanical, and the reply came back that both were "mere forms 

 of B. lanceolatum." 7 ' I knew better; even a child could have 

 seen that they were different things; every fern student knows 

 them to be distinct now ; even Mr. Davenport, with all his con- 

 servative views, does not doubt them to be distinct species, al- 

 though they are no more so than some others he does doubt. Let 

 us hope that the world will still move when both Mr. Davenport 

 and myself have likewise passed over to the silent majority. 



Other abundant opportunities for field study were offered 



*At my last visit to the Gray Herbarium in 1899 these specimens were 

 still glued side by side on the same sheet— a silent witness to the fact that 

 there is much sham in the " authority " idea. 



