BOTANICAL NOTES AND NEWS 63 



scarcely raised above sea-level, near sandy flats, and full of open 

 spaces with free circulation of air. The Linnaea was here growing 

 in company with heather, Empetrum, Aira, and Hypnum (loreum, 

 triquetrum, etc.), and mingling its flowers with the whitish purple 

 waxy bells of Erica Tetralix. It had to fight for its footing with 

 tall heather ; and, adapting itself to circumstances, grew more upright 

 than in its Novar habitat. In one place a heap of dry pine branches 

 occupied the middle of a plot, and the Linnaea crept and climbed up 

 among the loose branches till it clothed and overflourished the dead 

 twigs with beauty and verdure. 



Not far distant in the same wood Pyrola uniflora grew in fair 

 abundance " beautiful exceedingly." Its companions were Hypnum 

 triquetrum, Luzula, Goodyera, heather, and whin, under the last two 

 of which it frequently found shelter. 



Just on the outside of the wood, on'the close turf, great quantities 

 of the little pink shore centaury occurred in company with brown 

 plants of Bartsia, little white Spergula, sea-pink, and Spergularia, a 

 very pretty collocation. ARTHUR SUTHERLAND, M.B., Invergordon. 



P.S. The day after the above note was written (i2th Septem- 

 ber) I made my annual pilgrimage to the Novar station for Linnsea. 

 I found that the gales of November had stripped half the hillside of 

 its pines, and that the Linnaea patch was in the path of the destructive 

 north wind. Every tree in the neighbourhood for a quarter of a 

 mile went down. Among the confusion of prostrate trunks, up- 

 turned roots, and broken and scattered boughs, it was not easy to 

 spot the plant, but when discovered, though buried under pine 

 branches, it was found uninjured ; the plot, considering the condition 

 of the surrounding soil, having escaped disruption in a wonderful 

 manner. One plant was still in flower. The Hypnaceas that grew 

 in company were Hypnum Schreberi and Hylocomium splendens. 

 A. SUTHERLAND. 



I. On the various Divisions of British Carboniferous Rocks 

 as determined by their Fossil Flora (opening address delivered 

 before the Royal Physical Society, November 1893); 



II. On some new Species of Fossil Plants from the Lower 

 Carboniferous Rocks of Scotland (read December 1893), both by 

 Robert Kidston, F.R.S.E., F.G.S. In these papers Mr. Kidston has 

 done valuable service to the progress of Vegetable Palaeontology, as 

 well as to a more general and correct appreciation of the methods 

 useful in the determination of the age of the strata and of the 

 reliance to be placed on the different kinds of fossils. He has 

 shown excellent reasons for ranking the fossil flora as very reliable, 

 owing to the narrower limits within which the species are restricted 

 when compared with Mollusca ; while the preservation in the Car- 

 boniferous strata is often such as to give the utmost certainty in the 



