I9IO. Reviews. 57 



lu thi.s historical survey the abstract of Svaute Murbeck's important 

 papers on Parthenogenesis in the group is of special value, as showing 

 the permanence of the various forms and the general impiobabilit}- of 

 the occurrence amongst them of those In brid products which are the 

 despair of the monographer in such genera as Salix and Rumex and 

 Kpilobium. The conclusions arrived at b}- IMurbeck after long continued 

 research were published in the Botauiska Notiscr'\\\ 1897 and 1901. Here 

 he shows that amongst the Northern and Mid-European Alcheniilla 

 forms perfect pollen grains are rarely or never produced, so that the 

 embryo is developed out of the ovum without fertilization. The seed in 

 fact must be regarded as a portion of the mother plant which has become 

 independent by a purely vegetative process and in consequence of its 

 asexual or apogamous origin is capable of producing only the distinctive 

 characters of that mother plant. 



The concluding pages of the historical section pp. 36-38 will probably 

 be read with the greatest interest and with the closest scrutiny b\' Irish 

 botanists who are prone rather to synthesis than to anal3sis; for in 

 these pages Dr. landberg defends the position he has confidently 

 taken up that the various northern forms of the AUJicj)iillavnlga)is group 

 are " good species." He notes the difference of opinion which has ex- 

 isted and still exists amongst botanists as to the constancy and precise 

 value of the distinctions relied on for the separation of these forms, and 

 he frankly admits, too, the variability within the limits of each form of 

 the very characters relied on as distinguishing it from neighbouring 

 forms, such as the lobing of the leaf, the number of teeth in each 

 lobe, and the greater or less degree of hairiness of leaf and stem and 

 inflorescence. And yet there is no trace of hesitation in the final 

 judgment which he pronounces in these words: " lam entirely of 

 Buser's opinion that the northern AlcJumilla forms known to me are 

 as clearly distinct one from the other as any species recognized as 

 'good' by all botanists." But there is a marked sobriety in Dr. 

 Lindberg's anal3-sis of the old collective species of Linnaeus, He admits 

 to the large north European area of which he treats, an area including 

 roughly all P^irope north of the 55th parallel of latitude, only fourteen 

 segregate species with one sub-species and one variety, and treats as a 

 botanical curiosity M. Gandoger's elaboration of no less than seventy- 

 six species out of the Ivinueau aggregate. In this penetrating analysis 

 of the French botanist {lUora Etiropa^ Tome viii.) eighteen species ad- 

 ditional to those accepted by Dr. Lindberg, from Buser and other 

 authors are allocated to northern Europe ; and it may be of interest to 

 Irish botanists to learn that three of these eighteen, i.e., A. hibcniica, 

 A. omissa and A. piiiilosa, are credited to Ireland. 



In judging of the validity of the fourteen species accepted by our 

 author, the critic is not left to depend solely on the descriptions in 

 the text, full as they are. He is provided with a series of admirable 

 plates, almost life size, reproduced by process from herbarium speci- 

 mens and representing all the forms dealt with. So accurately and so 

 beautifully are these reproductions executed, even the texture being 

 faithfully rendered, that the student as he pores over them is at times 

 almost beguiled into imagining that he has before him a selectioii of 



