152 The Irish Naturalist. August, 



unlimited amount of energy which he has thrown into the 

 work of personally exploring those large tracts of ground 

 which had hitherto appeared least attractive to our field 

 naturalists. It was, indeed, already a matter of common 

 knowledge that he has added largely to the available data for 

 nearly every county ; but the appearance of this magnum opus 

 brings the fact before us in a new and welcome form. The 

 work is a supplement to Cybele in more senses than one. 

 However, the numerous additional " district records " which 

 have already been published in the Irish Naturalist form a 

 feature essentially different from the main and legitimate 

 object of the book, i.e., that of giving more minute topo- 

 graphical particulars than the plan of Cybele allowed of ; and 

 it is by the degree of success which has attended this aim 

 that the merits of " Irish Topographical Botany" must be 

 chiefly judged. 



So far as very rare species are concerned, Cybele Hibcrnica 

 gives all recorded localities with a greater fulness than Mr. 

 Praeger's plan (one line to each county with a record) admits 

 of. Consequently, the special value of the work under notice 

 is its presentation of the records for plants not so rare as to 

 call for enumeration of localities in Cybele. The care with 

 which this has been done is such that it would scarcely be 

 possible to wish for a better book on so ambitious a plan. To 

 criticise the details at all it is necessary for a reviewer to take 

 the county with which he happens to be best acquainted, and 

 in doing this one must not lose sight of Watson's reply to his 

 anticipated local critics, that "in a compilation concerning 

 itself with all the counties, a hundred oversights or omissions 

 would be only equivalent to a single such defect in one of 

 their own county lists." 



Taking, then, the county of Wexford, we can note a few 

 instances in which Mr. Praeger's records for plants found in 

 this division are not followed (as, in accordance with his rule, 

 they should have been) by any of those " implicatory " words — 

 " rare," " frequent," " not rare," &c. — which mean that other 

 localities besides those cited are known to the author. Such 

 oversights occur in the cases of Papaverrhceas, Lychnis diurna, 

 * Hype7 r icum calychium, A?rti7wi minus (perhaps here from 

 suspicion of error), and Mentha saliva, Osmunda regalis is 



