EARLY ICELANDIC BOTANY. 277 



as varieties of one species, of which F. pUcatnm is no doubt an en- 

 tirely sterile hixiiriant form. On the other hand, contrary to Asa 

 Gray's opinion, V. dilatatam, with the several forms or allied species 

 inclmled under the name of V . erosain, seem to me to have more affi- 

 nity with the American V. deidatiim, L., and F. pubescem, Pursh, thaa 

 with F. lantcaioides. 



EARLY ICELANDIC BOTANY. 

 By Henky Trimen, M.B., E.L.S. 



The paper by EottboU, alluded to in the notice (p. 23G) of Prof. 

 Babino^ton's ' Eevision of the Flora of Iceland,' and which has been 

 overlooked by him, is of sufficient importance to merit a more extenderl 

 notice, as several species were there first named, fully described and 

 figured. It is, with the exception of the descriptions, which are in 

 Latin, unfortunately written in Danish ; the English of the title runs 

 ' Observations on the new or little-known but rare Plants found in 

 Iceland and Greenland,' and there is prefixed to it a valuable ' Intro- 

 duction on the Progress of Botany in Denmark.' The paper was 

 read before the Copenhagen Natural History Society in 1766 and 

 1767, and was revised and published in 1770, in the tenth volume of 

 its Transactions {Skrifter, som ud'i del Kiobenhavnske Sehkab af Loerdum- 

 so(j SidenshihL'rs Elskere, etc.), pp. 393-462 ; its date of publication is 

 therefore the same as Miiller's list in the ' Nova Acta,' vol. iv., which 

 is quoted by Bal)ingtoii as the foundation of the Flora of Iceland, but 

 it really antedated that list by three or four years. As regards Ice- 

 land, both papers dealt with the plants collected there in 176 i, 1765, 

 by Dr. Konig, then almost the only existing material ; some of these 

 had been figured in 1767, in the sixth fasciculus of the 'Flora 

 Danica,' and though short diagnoses on the Linnsean plan were o-iven 

 to the new species, no specific names were applied, so that when 

 IiOttboU fully described them in his paper he was also free to name 

 them. 



Nineteen Icelandic species are specially described by Rottboll, and 

 there are figures of the whole of them, of which the following is a list 

 in the ord'r of the plates : — Kiinuja capitata, Genliuna involucrata, G. 

 deionsa, Swertia nulcuta (=Pl(^urotjijue rolala, Griseb.), Gcntia)ia 



