NEW PUBLICATIONS. 235 



land (Balier and Syme are mistaken in supposing that any of Borrer's specimens 

 are indigenous). It appears to me to be a form of S. Myrsinites . . . and not 

 at all allied to S. polaris or herhacea . . . The Eng. Bot. figures of the ovary 

 and scale are very incorrect " (p. 341) . 



Carex saxatilis, L. " I cannot escape the conviction that this totally dif- 

 ferent-looking plant ... is an alpine form of C. vesicaria, to which var. Gra- 

 hami forms a passage" (p. 421). 



From tliese passages it will be seen that tlie author lias investigated 

 many disputed points, and arrived at conclusions of his own. A ge- 

 neral and extended search through published information would have 

 rendered the book more uniformly exact, and saved the author from 

 such errors as the repetition of the Guernsey " Dlplotaxls viiii'mea " 

 (p. 31), which is known to have been nothing but small I), muralis. Of 

 a similar nature is the statement (p. 396) that Wolffia arrJiiza occurs 

 in Hants (a misprint for Kent in the Compendium Cyb. Brit., whence 

 it is copied into the ' Student's Flora,' though corrected in this 

 Journal, Vol. VII. p. 368) ; and this (p. 475), that Tceonia has been 

 known on Steep Holmes Island since Eay's time, when there is no 

 record that it was discovered there till 1803 by Mr. Wright (see Eng. 

 Bot. 1657). 



But though a minute criticism is able to detect some small errors of 

 this sort (which can be readily weeded out for a second edition), the 

 general style of the book is very accurate. The ' Student's Flora ' is a 

 decided advance on its predecessors in the same line ; its author has, 

 by bringing into conjunction the best features in them, whilst, at the 

 same time, getting rid of a great amount of irrelevant and useless 

 matter with which some text-books were encumbered, created as it were 

 a new starting-point for future British Floras. The simple language 

 and clear, terse style of the book render it very well adapted to the 

 class for whom it was specially written ; and we cannot but express a 

 hope that leisure will be found in the author's busy life to carry out his 

 original design, as novel as valuable, of a physiological and morpholo- 

 gical record of the British flora. 



A Revision of the Flora of Iceland. By Charles C. Babington, 

 M.A., F.R.S. (In the ' Journal of the Linnean Society, Botany,' 

 vol. xi. pp. 282-348.) 1870. 



A revised catalogue of Icelandic plants was still a real desideratum 



