36 The Irish Naturalist. March, 



REVIEWS. 



PLANT FORM AND MIGRATION. 



Die nordischen Alchemilla vulgaris-Formen und Ihre 

 Vcrbrcltung", Ein Beitrap; zur Kcntniss der Kimvanderuug der 

 Flora Feuuoscaudias niit besonderer Rilcksicht auf die fiulandiscbe 

 Flora. Von Harat^d Lindberg. Pp. 170 with 20 plates and 15 

 maps. Ada Soa'efatis Sa'evtianini Fe}inicat\ Tome xxxvii, No. 10. 

 Helsiugfors, 1909. 



The production of this admirable monograph of the Alcheniilla vulgaris 

 group of segregates has evidently been a labour of love with Dr. 

 Liudberg. He has devoted many years to the work and has not only 

 made himself master of all the literature of the subject but has examined 

 from 8.000 to 10,000 specimens drawn from such widely separated regions 

 as the Dublin Hills, the Greenland coasts, the shores of the White vSea, 

 and the basaltic plains and plateaux of Iceland and the Faroes. The 

 result is to give so complete a presentment of the distribution of the 

 forms through Northern Europe that the author is fully justified in the 

 hope expressed in his introduction that future re-search M'ill not 

 materially modify the conclusions arrived at. 



The monograph is divided into three .sections, the Historical, the 

 Special and the General, and a brief survey of these will best exhibit 

 the singular thoroughness of the work which is at once .scholarly and 

 scientific. It is, in short, ^^riiudlich, to borrow a word from the tongue 

 in which Dr. Lindberg writes. The first section is made up of an ex- 

 haustive and most interesting survey of the literature of AlcliemiUa 

 vitlgaj-is and its segregates from the appearance of the Kreuterbuch of 

 Brunfels in 1488, where '• unser Frawen mantel" is first fignred, down 

 to C G. Westerlund's Studier i'lfver de Svciiskafornicrim af Alcheniilla 7'ulgaris, 

 published at Norrkoping in rgoj. The first part of this historical survey 

 from Brunfels to Linne is arranged in chronological order, the second 

 from Linne down to the present century is grouped by countrie.s, Great 

 Britain leading, followed by Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and 

 Ru.ssia. Hardly any work of importance appears to have been over- 

 looked. Even the .scanty botanical literature of this remote old island 

 of ours has been conscientiou.sly explored, and Mackay's Floia Hibcrniia 

 and the modest Irish Naturalist have been dragged into light. But 

 Mr. Praeger's Gleanings in Irish Topographical Botany has eluded the 

 author's research, with the result that the Irish distributioi: of the three 

 segregates known to occur in our island has been understated by from 

 6 to 7 county divisions. Passing to Scandinavia, the rich botanical lore 

 of Norway and Sweden, .so far as it bears on the authors theme, is 

 skilfullv condensed and reviewed. The by no means meagre contri- 

 butions of Danish and I'innish botanists are also passed in review, 

 and the result of Dr. Eindberg's polyglot re.searches is to provide the 

 student with the quintessence of all that has been written on the 

 subject of the AUhemilla -.vulgaris group in Northern Europe from the 

 banks of the Liffev to the banks of the Neva. 



