1901. Moffat. — Irish Topographical Botany. 153 



incorrectly described as " now extremely rare " in the county ; 

 though its range is reduced, there are places where it is still 

 abundant, and likely to remain so. The note on Pinguicula 

 lusita?iica, " N.K- chiefly, rare," is misleading, as this butter- 

 wort is common in all the bogs of the N.W., where P. vulgaris 

 is absent. As to the last-named plant, we are sure Mr. 

 Praeger has authority for including it in the Wexford flora, 

 but no localities are known to us ; while we should certainly 

 have considered Antcnnaria dioica rare, instead of " more or 

 less frequent," in the county. To criticise further we should 

 almost have to inquire into the shades of meaning which 

 separate " not rare" from "frequent," and " very frequent " 

 from " common." If for every county the main result is as 

 accurate as for Wexford, the whole is excellent indeed. 



Six coloured maps add greatly to the interest and attractive- 

 ness of the volume. The large map of "Ireland in forty 

 botanical divisions " (Plate I.) is particularly good, and the 

 petrological map, in nine colours (PI. V.), also deserves special 

 notice. Plate II., showing the "progress of field work," is 

 perhaps of more personal than botanical interest, and we 

 question whether the section of it which aims at showing the 

 "state of county lists in 1895" conveys an impression quite 

 fair to previous explorers. Ought Division 15 (south-east 

 Galway), for instance, to have been left uncoloured, implying 

 that no work of importance had been done there ? More's 

 " Notes on the flora of the neighbourhood of Castle Taylor" 

 supplied material from which a list of more than 200 species 

 might easily have been made. True, More named in that 

 paper only some 130 out of the total of 432 species which he 

 mentioned having found about Castle Taylor. But he added 

 to those 130 a list of all the most common plants which he had 

 failed to find, and, as he used Watson's census-figures as the 

 criterion of frequency, this was only another way of stating what 

 species of equally high census rank {i.e., 15 Provinces) occurred 

 at Castle Taylor. It does not therefore seem very accurate to 

 include the county-division among the many whose ascertained 

 floras did not, on the average, exceed 100 species. 



The Introduction contains an excellent brief account of the 

 physical and botanical features of each division, stating in 

 every case the area, prevalent geological formation, per- 



