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DEPARTMENT OF BOTANY 



would send me some of the var. dlssectum as you undersand It about 



A - 1 89 



Eastern Massachusetts • The foirm I have collecting in Connecticut for 

 dissectum is utterly different ft?om that that we have here, I do not wa 

 want to do any rash thing but I do not believe that Milde settled the 

 specific limits of Botrychium for all time any more than one of our 

 recent American botanists settled the species of Oxalis as they are 

 now arranged in the last edition of Gcay's Itonualf where four species a 

 and a variety do service for aboiit eight very distinct species , and the 

 nrmes that OTe given in the manual misapplied at that as pa?oven by 

 the original specimens ( types )f compared at London, and in Elliott's 

 herbarium at Charleston which none of the New England botanists have 

 ever talcen the trouble to look up. The monographer in qiaestion -.however 

 is Dr. Trelease . But I wander from my subject . Some of us who have 

 been west and south have found how these completed revisions fail to 

 cover the case vrhen we get out in the fields away from the Immediate vi- 

 cinity where the revision was made* I have expccessed what I believe 

 is the proper attitute toward a revision in a paper recently publish- 

 ed of which I will send you a copy as soon as I receive the extras. I 

 think it a very coiomon error to look upon a revision as a finality 

 rather than a datum line for expressing the present state of our knowl- 

 edge and for building from for the futurei Nor do I believe this to 

 be anarchy but the true spirit of scientific research, I think then 

 that Synopsis Pllicum will be someday revised by some one who has 

 access to the great Kew collection and the places where the older Engl 

 ish botanists have unceremoniously lumped a lot of things that are ful- 



