114 The Irish Naturalist. June, 



six geuera just referred to as retained in Cybele in defiance of the law of 

 priority. The result of this wholesome reaction is to bring the nomen- 

 clature of the Hand List, which adheres to the Vienna Rules, into much 

 closer conformity with Irish distributional text-books than might have 

 been expected from the trend of nomenclature reform a few } ears ago. 

 The changes which appear in the list in the specific or trivial names are 

 rather numerous, but the addition in parentheses of the Cybele names 

 precludes all confusion from this source. 



If these nomenclature changes in the Hand List are not such as to 

 cause any serious obstacle to its use in conjunction with Topographical 

 Botany or Cybele Hibeniica, it is otherwise with the sequence of orders 

 which it adopts. The familiar Benthamic arraugement, in a descending 

 series from Ranunculaceae to Filices, is discarded in favour of Bugler's 

 sequence, an ascending series from the Ferns upwards to the Composites 

 {Syllabus der Pflanzen-Jamilien, 5th Kd.). As is obvious from the position 

 he assigns to the Composites, Bugler's sequeuce is not a mere reversal 

 of Bentham and Hooker's. There is much internal re-arrangement of 

 the orders. The Ranunculaceae are relegated to the middle, the Milk- 

 worts are placed alongside the Spurges, the Potamogetons precede the 

 Grasses, and the Heaths come close to the Umbellifers. Such a re-ar- 

 rangement may prove to be fully justified as an expression of botanical 

 affinities, and Professor Johnson may be a true prophet when he asserts 

 in his preface that Bugler's system " must sooner or later be used by 

 field botanists ever} where." Yet, for all that, the adoption of the new 

 system in the Hand Jyist cannot fail to prove a hindrance to its use in 

 conjunction wiih our Irish distributional text books. 



As a guide to the comparative rarity of our Irish species the List leaves 

 nothing to be desired. The numbers following each species truly repre- 

 sent their county distributions as known at the opening of this year, and 

 present to the field worker a compendious summary of the results re- 

 corded in Topographical Botany and in the supplements to that work. But 

 the list does something more than this. It places on record, in their 

 proper systematic positions and distinguished b}' italic type, the nu- 

 merous casuals hitherto observed in Ireland, including many for the first 

 time detected by Miss Knowles, who has given special attention to this 

 unstable element in our flora. A rather wide interpretation has been 

 given to the term Casual, so that a few species are found italicised 

 which some of us would prefer to see simply starred as established aliens, 

 such, for instance, as Erimis alpinits and Mentha Kequieni^ which appear 

 to be fully domiciled in Cork. But this sceptical attitude towards aliens, 

 if fault it be, is surely a " blessed fault." 



In conclusion it should be said that the Hand List is carefully printed, 

 and the proofs so well revised that errors are singularly few and un- 

 important. When a reprint is called for, it might be well to produce 

 along with it a few copies of an edition de luxe on better paper and at a 

 correspondingly higher price, say two pence, or even three pence. 



N. C. 



