trait6 ^l^mentaire de botanique. 253 



facing west, and near a river. Mr. N. Colgan (Joum. Bot. 1892, 

 p. 310) mentions having found tliis species in the Aran Isles, 

 Ireland, at not more than 150 ft. above sea-level. — Symers M. 

 Macvicar. 



Festuca heterophylla in Surrey. — The conditions under which 

 this plant occurs at Witley have not been adequately described. 

 The Rev. E. S. Marshall conducted me to the spot where it grows 

 in 1889 or 1890, and since then I have seen no reason to change 

 the opinion concerning its claims to be considered native which I 

 expressed to Mr. Marshall at the time. The grass grows princi- 

 pally along the margin of a copse, under hazel-bushes, &c. The 

 copse is an artificial one, at all events to a considerable extent, and 

 contains exotic as well as native shrubs. This part of the copse is 

 encircled by an ornamental walk which lies a few feet below the 

 level of the copse, and it is along the top of the bank above the 

 walk that the Fentuca grows. About the walk are planted laurels, 

 rhododendrons, &c., if my memory serves me, but I am not quite 

 certain. Not many yards away is a brook, on the further side of 

 which there is a tuft of C>/penis lotu/ns. When Mr. Marshall 

 discovered this he considered it to be wild ; I greatly doubted this, 

 and he subsequently ascertained that it had been planted by a 

 former owner of the property ! There are several obvious ways in 

 one or other of which the Festuca has probably been introduced : it 

 may have been intentionally planted, like the Cyperus, by one 

 interested in growing rare or curious plants ; it may have been 

 accidentally introduced with other herbaceous plants or with some 

 of the imported shrubs. It is seldom that a plant, recorded as 

 native, can be absolutely proved to be introduced, as in the case of 

 the Cyperus ; and there is just that possibility of wildness about the 

 Festuca that is comoion to a good many plants that are wisely 

 considered as introductions. And this, 1 think, is all that can be 

 said for it. — W. H. Beeby. 



[Mr. Beeby's description of the Witley locality should be com- 

 pared with Mr. Marshall's in Jotirn. Bot. 1889, 250. We do not 

 propose to reopen the discussion as to the nativity of the Festuca, 

 which was carried on at some length in this Journal for 1889 and 

 1890.— Ed. Journ. Bot.] 



NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



Traite elementaire de botanique. Par L6on G^rardin. Paris : 

 Bailliere et Fils. 1895. Bvo, pp. 478 ; 535 figs. 6 fr. 



We congratulate M. Gerardin and his co-worker, M. Guede, on 

 the production of a useful and characteristic little text-book. There 

 is a certain novelty in the arrangement of the matter, and con- 

 siderable novelty, at any rate from a text-book point of view, in the 

 illustrations. Mention is generally, though not always, made of the 

 source from which the latter have been borrowed ; we notice that 

 Sir John Lubbock's Seedlinys has supplied several. Unfortunately, 



