jgi2. Reviezvs. 153 



distinguish the further " splits " which have been accorded full sub- 

 specific rank in the present Hand -List. 



The bloodhound search for priority has resulted, of course, in a good 

 many changes of generic as well as specific names. Erithacus (for the 

 Robin) gives way to Dandalus, and Accentor (for the Hedge-Sparrows) 

 to Prunella, Chelidon and Hirundo change places, so that the Swallow 

 appears as Chelidon rustica rusiica and the Martin as Hirundo urbica 

 iirhica. The Sand-Martin and Swift are respectively Riparia riparia 

 riparia and Apiis apiis apus. The Barn Owl figures strangely as Tyto 

 alba alba. The Great Northern Diver becomes Gavia immer, the generic 

 name of Colymbus being found to belong more properly to the Grebes. 

 Tringa is transferred from the Stints and Dunlins to the Sandpipers, Erolia 

 taking its place and Totanus vanishing. In Megalornis grus grus we 

 must recognise the Common Crane. Of the changes in specific names 

 perhaps the most regrettable — after the transfer of Turdus miisiciis — is 

 that which transposes the Nightingale into Liiscinia megarhyricha niega- 

 rhyncha. One can imagine the language into which Ruskin would 

 have burst. It is refreshing to turn back to the page where a name 

 like Pastor roseus stands out in lonely splendour, unchanged, unredupli- 

 cated, and untransf erred. 



Irish naturalists will probably be pleased to find that the Yellow- 

 billed and Black-billed Cuckoos of North America, excluded by the late 

 Mr. Howard Saunders for the British and Irish Lists, are re -admitted 

 as " rare vagrants " by the authors of the Hand-List. On the other hand, 

 the door is banged against both the American Robin and the Purple 

 Martin, which are placed in precisely the same level as the American 

 Goldfinch that was shot on Achill Island in 1894. The Nuthatch seen 

 last year at Malahide by Mr. Williams (/r. Nat., vol. xx, pp. 95, 115), 

 is also referred to as " no doubt introduced." 



C.B.M. 



NOTES. 



BOTANY. 



Matthiola sinuata at Ballyvaughan. 



Mrs. Seton, of 13 Clarendon Road, Holland Park, London, sends a speci- 

 men of the Sea Stock collected in May at Ballyvaughan, where she has 

 discovered a good colony of this rare plant. She writes ; — " The colony 

 grows on the sandhills about f mile east of the coastguard station — nine 

 plants are in one circular depression facing inland, and a tenth is by 

 itself some little way off on the sea edge of the sandbank." The Sea 

 Stock is one of the rarest of Irish plants, being with the exception of an 

 unverified Kerry record a century and a half old, confined to Wexford 

 and Clare. Of the two Clare records, one (Dough) has not been verified 

 during a hundred years. In the other (Straw Island off Inishmore) it 

 was last seen (leaves only) by Mr. P. B. O' Kelly in 1894. 



Dublin. R. Lloyd Praeger. 



