PHYTOLOGY. 



HOBKIRK'S "SYNOPSIS OF THE BRITISH MOSSES." 



P HOUGH a new work on British Muscology was much 

 needed, owing to all existing works on the subject being 

 out of date, the announcement made last year by Mr. Hobkirk, 

 that he was about to publish a Synopsis of the British Mosses 

 took most botanists by surprise. It is also unquestionable that 

 after its announcement this new work was looked for with a 

 good deal of curiosity, and not a little misgiving. The reasons 

 for this are manifest. Mr. Hobkirk was not generally known 

 as a muscologist ; he had gathered nothing of any conse- 

 quence ; he had distributed nothing • he had published 

 nothing ; and he had not added a single new species to the 

 British list. British muscologists had been so accustomed 

 to Berkeley's handbook, Schimper's Synopsis, and Wilson's 

 Bryologia — all expensive works written by world-renowned 

 botanists — that there was some wonder among them as to what 

 would be the character of a work offered to subscribers for 5s., 

 and undertaken by one comparatively unknown. Moreover, 

 the only work approaching to Mr. Hobkirk's in size and price 

 is Stark's British Mosses, a work which certainly gives the 

 mimimum of satisfaction to the student. The size and price, 

 therefore, of the Synopsis, were not very suggestive of good 

 things. 



Mr. Hobkirk's work has now been before us for some 

 months. We have tested it in the field and in the study ; we 

 have compared its descriptions of species with descriptions of 

 the same species given elsewhere, and with actual specimens, 

 and we have no hesitation in saying that it is not to be men- 

 tioned in the same breath with Stark's work. It is almost equal 

 to Berkeley's, except that it has not a single figure of genera or 

 species, and not a line of introduction. To the ordinary 



