I9IO- Reviews. 113 



AN IRISH PLANT LIST. 



National lYIuseutn of Science and Art, Dublin : Hand List 

 of Irish Flowering Plants and Ferns. Dubliu, 1910. Pp. 

 26, iv. Price \d. 



Irisli field botanists are to be cougratulated ou the issue of this 

 valuable little Hand List at the "ridiculously small " price of one penny. 

 A sufficient guarantee of its accuracy is to be found in the statement 

 made at the close of Professor Johnson's brief preface that the prepara- 

 tion of the work is due to his assistant. Miss M. C. Knowles. Her 

 familiarity with the Irish flora, no less in literature than in the field and 

 in the herbarium, is well-kno'svn to all students of Irish plant distribu- 

 tion, and they certainly owe her a debt of gratitude for the production 

 oi Ti vade iiicaini\s\\\Q.\\ is destined to travel far and wide with them on 

 their plant-hunting forays. 



The title of the work is misleadingly modest. If it were published, as 

 it well might be, under the style. The Dublin Catalogue of Irish Plants, its 

 scope would be immediately apparent ; for the Hand List does for Ireland 

 precisely what the well-known Loiidojt Catalogue does for Great Britain. 

 With students of Irish plant distribution this Hand List of ours is bound 

 to supersede the London Catalogue, since it gives us in one view the 

 Irish flora and its county distribution unhampered by the addition of 

 those numerous species of Great Britain which we need never hope to 

 find in our remoter and more ancient island. No disparagement is here 

 suggested of the familiar London Catalogue, which has done us Irish 

 botanists such good service in the past. Irish botany has simply forged 

 ahead, so that we have at last, what we long desired to have, and what 

 the peculiar geological history and geographical position of our island 

 demands, a succinct statement of the Irish flora as a separate botanical 

 entit}' of European interest. 



In spite of many changes of name necessitated by a strict adherence 

 to the law of priorit}-, it is pleasant to find that at least the generic 

 names of the List differ but little from those adopted in the second 

 edition of Cybeh Hibcrnica (1S98) and the later Irish Topographical Botany oi 

 Mr. Praeger (1901), which follows the nomenclature of Cybde. After 

 long discussion of this perplexing question of nomenclature some twelve 

 }ears ago, the editors of Cybele, convinced that a revolt against the strict 

 application of the priority law was bound to come sooner or later, 

 decided to retain such well established generic names as Spergularia, 

 Capsclla^ Corydalis, Calystegia, iMertensia, and Daboecia, while rejecting their 

 egal and newly resurrected rivals, Buda, Bursa, Ncckera, Volvulus, and 

 Borctta. This forecast of the drift of opinion has been justified ; for the 

 last International Botanical Congress held at Vienna in 1905 has, as is 

 well known, adopted a rule (20), and in accordance therewith a list of 

 generic names {Index noviinum gencricorum titiqice conservandatum) which are 

 nceforth to be taboo to the nomenclature reformer. In this list or 

 Ij^dex of "permissible illegalities," as we venture to call it, appear the 



