212 SHORT NOTES AND aUERlES. 



Umbellifer ; Mr. MelviU considers it indigenous. We hope to give a 

 plate of it shortly, but it will be well to wait till the fruit is ripe before 

 doing so ; indeed, in the absonee of ripe fruit, it is not possible to speak 

 with absolute certainty as to its name. — Eds. Joukn. Bot.] 



PoLYGALA AUSTRIACA, Craiitz., IN Kent. — I liave much pleasure in 

 sending specimens of this, which I had the good fortune of discovering 

 on June 5th on Wye Down. Dr. Boswell Syme, to whom I submitted a 

 specimen, pronounced it to be undoubtedly P. anstriaca. On June 17th 

 I again, in company with another botanist, found it plentifully growing in 

 tv\'o narrow strips of rough, chalky ground on the border of copsewood. 

 There must surely be more of it on other parts of the downs, which are 

 very extensive. — J. P. Duthie. 



[We hope our readers will examine any chalk districts in their neigh- 

 bourhoods for this interesting Polygala, hitherto only known in England 

 in two spots in North Yorkshire. It is readily distinguished from P. cal- 

 cnrea, Schultz, by its much smaller tlowers and narrow wings. The 

 central nerve also of the wings is either not at all or but very slightly 

 branched, and the branches very rarely, though occasionally to a slight 

 extent, inosculate with those of the lateral veins. Some of Mr. Duthie's 

 specimens are between four and five inches high. They seem referable 

 to the restricted P. anstriaca of Reichenbach; the Teesdale plant being 

 his P. uUginosa. — H. T.] 



Htmenophyllum unilaterale. — Apropos of the extract relative to 

 this plant printed at page 188, I wish to remark that through the kind- 

 ness of Lady Barkly I had the opportunity of examining specimens of the 

 plant referred to by Mr. Andrews, wliicli was given to Dr. Meller from 

 the Bourbon Museum as authentic H. unilaterale, " named by Bory de 

 St. Vincent himself," and that they clearly do not belong to nnilaterale 

 at all, but to //. gracile, of Bory, which occurs both in Bourbon and the 

 Mauritius, a plant which, though rather like tn7ibridge)ise in general habit, 

 differs from it by the segments being destitute of serration (as Mr. An- 

 drews has noted), and in the position of the sori and shape of the invo- 

 lucre. The original description of unilaterale by Willdenow (Sp. Plant. 

 v. 522) from Bory's specimens is a tolerably full one; and if Mr. An- 

 drews will compare his plant with this he will, I doubt not, see clearly 

 that two very different species have been confounded together, j)robably 

 by some accidental transposition of labels. We have no specimen at 

 Kew of any Hymenoplujllnm with serrated segments from Bourbon at all, 

 and only one from the Mauritius, gathered by Captain Caruiichael long 

 ago, and that has a distinctly toothed involucre, and in this way differs 

 from unilaterale as Willdenow describes it just as tuubrldgense differs 

 from Wilsoni. So far as the description of unilaterale goes, it fits our 

 English Wilsoni very well. H. Boryanum is very different from either 

 gracile or nnilaterale, much stronger, and more compound than either 

 when properly developed, with hairy surfaces, and copious compound, 

 round, terminal sori. — J. G. Baker. 



Cyperus fuscus. — In the last number (p. 148) Dr. J. E. Gray im- 

 pugns the character of the above little plant as a native Englishman, but 

 I -am at a loss to know on what grounds. Its Middlesex habitat may 



