2'JO SIiailT NOTES. 



So that we get primary varietal characters principally in — 



1. Robustness of general habit and degree of elongation of the 

 barren shoots ; 



2. Shape of leaves and leaf-lobes ; 



3. Shape of calyx-lobes : 



And more or less variation under each variety, mainly in — • 



1. Depth of leaf-lobes ; 



2. Vestiture of the whole plant ; 



3. Number and size of the flowers. 



But if, studying the varieties in Britain and Germany, we are led to 

 conclude that their relationship to one another is as close as has been 

 indicated (and, for my own part, I cannot come to any other conclu- 

 sion), it is extremely curious, in the light of this view, to study the 

 geographical distribution of the varieties. How is it they are dis- 

 persed as we find them amongst our own hills? But especially how is 

 it that at one end of the chain, hypiioides and its two nearest allies are 

 entirely cut off through such a wide northern area, whilst at the other 

 end of the chain, all of them, except the extreme hjpnoidta link, are 

 cut off through a very wide tract of those southern regions through which 

 Dactyloid Saxifrages are distributed? 



SHORT NOTES. 



Eestokation of SciRPUS PARVULUS, Roem. and SchulL, to the 

 English Flora. — This plant was first discovered about the year 1835, 

 by the Rev. G. E. Smith, on a mud flat near Lymin'gton, Hants, and 

 although carefully searched for subsequently by the late J\Ir. Borrer 

 and Dr. Bromfield, on the spot indicated by the discoverer, no traces 

 of it have since been found. From that time it was generally con- 

 sidered an extinct species, till in 1868 Mr. A. G. More found it in 

 soft mud, overflowed at high tide in salt marsh creeks, at the mouth of 

 the river Ovoca, coast of Wicklow, Ireland (Journ. of Bot. Vol. VI. 

 p. 321); still the English Flora could not claim it. In the third 

 edition of ' English Botany,' edited by J. T. Boswell Syme, LL.D., 

 the plant is supposed by that eminent botanist to be extinct, and 

 more recently by Dr. Hooker in his ' Student's Flora,' p. 402. I was 

 fortunate enough to find it last July on sandy saline ground, under 



