2 — Mr. Walter Dearie . 



differences. These would be the greatest help to anyone 

 revising a genus. We have always welcomed visiting students 

 and have always responded to requests for help of any kind 

 by mail. For this reason I felt when Wiegend f s Revision 

 of Echinochloa came out that he was basing the work on insuf- 

 ficient material and study when he neglected to consult much the 

 richest herbarium in the country. I was particularly struck 

 by a remark of his to the effect that the species referred 

 by Dr. Hitchcock to E. sabulicola was "probably not Panicum 

 sabulicolum Hees" because Sees described the species from 

 Montevideo which is"outside the range ....as known to the writer^ 

 If the writer had consulted this herbarium he would have 

 found the species ranging to Argentina. In so difficult a 

 genus as Echinochloa with species so variable it seems to me 

 that any work to be published should be based on all material 

 available for study. Dr. Hitchcock saw Hees" own specimen 

 of the species in question, made notes upon it ,and was allowed 

 to take a fragment of it which wers deposited here and which 

 Mr. Wiegand could have seen. I wanted to write a review of this 

 paper, which is astonishingly bad in many ways, but if I did so, 

 I am afraid it would give the impression that we resented it if 

 other people worked on grasses. Of course, those who know us 

 know this is not true, that we do all we can to encourage others 

 to take up groups of grasses and are only too glad to turn over 



