164 Bibliographical Notices. 



unwearied observation of living nature and familiarity with the 

 published and unpublished researches of contemporary botanists vip 

 to the latest moment are obvious to any reader. The only new 

 feature of this edition is an attempt to introduce all ho7idJide English 

 names, excluding those uncouth Anglo-Latin titles which sound like 

 fond reminiscences of pre-Linnaean nomenclature. Mr. Babington 

 has advanced a little — we wish it had been more — towards distin- 

 guishing undoubted and little doubted natives from suspected in- 

 truders of all kinds. Some species formerly at liberty are now 

 bracketed ; others bracketed with numbers are now bracketed with- 

 out numbers ; others are absolutely rejected. The notation, however, 

 is in this respect somewhat ambiguous and inconsistent. A few 

 probably new species, about which the author has not yet quite made 

 up his mind, are neither excluded nor admitted to full citizenship, 

 but wisely introduced on a doubtful footing : Vtricularia neglecta and 

 Potamogeton gracilis may be taken as examples. The disagreeable 

 but necessary work of correcting the synonyms goes on as before, 

 the result in some cases being the restoration of old names ; thus 

 Myosotis suaveolens is now once more alpestris. Little can be 

 objected against these proceedings except their piecemeal nature. 

 A fearless and thorough revision of the names of our plants on de- 

 finite principles, whether those of the British Association or others, 

 is much wanted. Mr. Babington did good service in this depart- 

 ment in the early part of his career : it is to be wished that he would 

 return to it with increased knowledge on a more methodical plan than 

 he has lately followed. This desultoriness is perhaps not confined 

 to nomenclature. Mr. Babington*s observations, extensive and minute 

 as they are, appear to have been too much confined to such plants as 

 have accidentally fallen in his way. For instance, he long ago de- 

 scribed, on rather slender evidence, a Potamogeton allied to P. pec^ 

 tinatus as probably the P. zosteraceus of Fries. In his third edition, 

 having become better acquainted with the plant, he named it anew 

 as P.JlabellatuSy at the same time distinguishing P. pectinatus in 

 italics as having " leaves formed of two interrupted tubes."' This 

 language might surely be too easily taken to mean that the leaves of 

 P. pectinatus differ essentially in structure from the upper leaves 

 of P.flabellatus. Mr. Babington is of course too good a botanist 

 not to have known, that in plants so closely allied the difference (if 

 such there be) could only be one of proportion, as the leaves of 

 neighbouring species are likewise formed of "interrupted tubes," 

 and the peculiarity of P. pectinatus can lie only in the predominance 

 of two over the rest. Bjut though the ambiguity of 1851 may be 

 excused by the want of adequate knowledge of the corresponding 

 structure in P. flabellatus, it was surely incumbent on the author of a 

 Flora to have studied his own species a little further before 1856, and 

 not to leave the description as deceptive as ever, especially as Hooker 

 and Arnott had meanwhile challenged the distinctness of the species 

 on definite grounds. Many of the important changes of detail now 

 introduced into the * Manual ' are already known to our readers 

 through the monographs which the author has lately published 



