210 THE JOURNAL OF BOTxVNY 



referred to above it was plentifully in pod in August 1886, " with 

 many ripe seeds " ; and two months later, on October 5th, the late 

 David Fry reported " a fresh crop of plants in flower." Surely 

 Withering, Smith, Lindley, J. D. Hooker (Shcdenfs' Flora), and 

 other authors were incorrect in calling this species perennial? I 

 concur with Bentham and the French botanists in regarding it as 

 annual, or possibly it ma}^ sometimes be biennial. " July and August " 

 of the earlier English authors has suitably been corrected to May and 

 June as its usual time of flowering in this country. — H. S. Thompson. 



Alchemilla filicaulis Buser (p. 165). The explanation of 

 Mr. Ley's locality has been kindly sent me by Miss Armitage. 

 Honddu valley (the Llanthon}^ valley: Monmouthshire) was for 

 botanical purposes included in the Flora of Herefordshire (District 14). 

 Daren (=Taren) means a rocky clifE in the valley side. — A. J. Wil- 



MOTT. 



KEVIEW. 



A Review of the New Species of Plants proposed by N. L. Burman 

 in his Flora Indica. By ELiiER D. Merrill, Director and 

 JBotanist, Bureau of Science, Manila. Separate from The 

 Fhilijjpine Journal of Science, vol. xix. no. 3, September 1921. 

 Manila, Bureau of Printing. 



In this Keview, Mr. Merrill has increased the debt of gratitude 

 which is due to him from all Avho are interested in the history of 

 Botany. Since 1905, when he published his first account of the 

 species described in Blanco's Flora de Filipinos (1837-1846), of 

 which his Species Blancoance (1918) may be considered as a second and 

 greatly enlarged edition, he has, in the intervals of his investigations 

 of the present Philippine flora, devoted himself to the elucidation of 

 the work of earlier authors. His Interpretation of Jiumphins''s 

 Herbarium Amhoinense (1917) is noticed at length in this Journal 

 for 1918, p. 362-5 ; and his Commentary on Loureiro' s Flora 

 Cochinchinensis, of which he has generously supplied the principal 

 herbaria with copies in type-script, is an invaluable comment on that 

 w^ork. Now, in the painstaking and accurate way which has rendered 

 his publications so valuable, he reviews the species jjroposed by 

 Burman in his Flora Indica (1768), and in the course of his work 

 restores many names for which Burman's claims to recognition have 

 hitherto been ignored or disregarded. 



As a result of his careful investigations, Mr. Merrill has been 

 "impressed with the fact that \i\2^\\j European botanists do not seem 

 fully to realize the value and utility of types when interpreting 

 insufficiently described species of the early authors. In many cases," 

 he continues, "a few hours' journe}", or in others a httle correspon- 

 dence, would make available the data which would definitely fix the 

 status of a species. Instead of this course, however, the unsatisfactory 



