Tom Watters wrote, "Somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, I seem to
remember someone telling me that a lot of "Claiborne"
material came from elsewhere, but was mailed from there, which was close
enough for government work. For this I suggest a new type designation - the
postaltype, material mailed from the nearest city but probably collected
who-knows-where."
 
Indeed yes. Another early Alabama collector, E. R. Schowalter (later
spelled Showalter), had printed labels bearing his name and his address:
Uniontown, Ala. In those days, there was no home delivery, so addresses
often consisted of post offices without street names. Okay, Dr. Schowalter
sent a lot of material to people with these labels, including the very T.
A. Conrad whose work we have been discussing. It is no wonder that, years
later, Uniontown was (and continues to be) commonly mistaken as the
collecting locality of these specimens.
 
The same problem comes up today in donated collections that are poorly
documented. Usually they come from only a small number of localities and
one can often work out which is which by talking with the collector, but
one can never be sure, and there are always ambiguities, especially with
material that they bought or traded for. The most productive use that a
curator has for non-unique, poorly documented specimens is to donate them
for classroom use in a high school. As Dr. W. has shown, otherwise they can
pester taxonomists with unanswerable questions till the end of time, and
frankly, taxonomists aren't paid enough to be bothered with such problems.
Especially not government-paid taxonomists!
 
Andrew K. Rindsberg, who may be more than good enough for government work
Geological Survey of Alabama