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