SPECIES-MAKING AT SECOND-HAND 175 
But excessive or ignorant species-making is to be dealt 
with relentlessly, especially when made at second-hand, as in 
a given case by Montagne, resting himself upon the supposed 
infallibility of a certain observer. And he adds: 
My dear friend, I want no enlightenment or refresh- 
ment about Ballia Homhroniana ; I examined them native 
hundreds of times ; it is one of the most common southern 
Algae, and T often tried if that state was a different species ; 
Brown would not make me believe it a good one. 
I shall give Montagne a rap over the knuckles if he does 
not look out ; we are not all fools because he is so double- 
barrelled knowing ; it is childish of him to insist against the 
testimony we have and which he has no grounds whatever 
to disprove ; it is silly of him to adduce as an argument 
that an unbotanical man pronounced them distinct. ^ 
Against Montagne there was another score to be chalked 
up. He was bringing out a book on the Algae himself, and 
Hooker had sent him a copy of his best plate of Alga drawings. 
With this Montagne was so much delighted that he promptly 
incorporated it in his book, a most undesirable form of com- 
pliment. To Harvey, who was much upset by the incident, 
Hooker writes : 
With regard to your clier confrere, I have had a hearty 
laugh at your distress. I am wholly to blame for being so 
weak as to send him it ; feeling as I did at the time how 
dangerous a thing I was doing. . . . However, I try to 
laugh off my disappointment at being chiselled so dirtily 
out of my pet plate amongst the Algae. Confound his 
^ A little later, the same point is amusingly exemplified in the description 
of Planehon, the Kew assistant, given to Bentham, September 25, 1846 : 
' Planehon thrives, i.e. grows leaner and looks yellower and hungrier. He 
is getting up his geography with a vengeance, and now no two plants can be 
the same, if gathered two miles apart : he is hammering away at the Compositae 
splendidly, and after having abused D. C. for making infinitely too many 
species on other genera he now wants to make more of Senecio ! even of the 
S. American, all except the Antarctic of which he says I have made too 
many. There never was such a compound of contradictions. I benefited 
enormously by his views and " 9a touche's " on genera and orders, but on 
species he fairly drives me mad. We are capital friends, however, only bicker 
a bit. He is now trying to get some friend's picture of a water-lily exhibited 
at the R.A. next year ; I tell him he might as well try to get himself into the 
Book of Beauty.' Cp. p. 344. 
