BOOK-TfOTES, NEWS, ETC. 213 



.LInnean Herbarium and tlio IJrItish Musouin sliows that it is Carnm 

 copticum, a well-known medicinal plant which yields the Ajowan 

 seeds and Ajowan oil of commerce, from which thymol is obtained. 

 Linnieus gave it the trivial name Ammi because he believed it to be 

 the source of the *' seeds of the true Ammi " of pharmacy : '* Ammios 

 veri semina." The history of the di-ug Ammi goes back nearly 

 2000 years. Dioscorides, who lived in the first century of the 

 Christian era, described it as having a minute seed with the flavour 

 of marjoram. The illustration in the Codex Vindohonensis, which 

 dates from the sixth century, represents Ammi Visnaga. The Ammi 

 depicted by Fuchsius in the sixteenth century was Ammi majus ; the 

 plant figured by Matthiolus about the same time was Pft/cJiotis 

 ammoides. But when we turn to the beautiful plates of Umbellifene 

 published by Eivinus at the end of the seventeeth century we find 

 that the ofiicinal Ammi of that date was Carum copticiim. This is 

 confirmed by the specimen of Ammi in the herbarium of Ferro (at 

 the Natural History Museum), a Venetian apothecary who died in 

 1674. The geographical source of the drug also suggests that the 

 true Ammi was Carum copicum. The best quality of Ammi was 

 imported from Alexandria, but was actually grown in Arabia, where 

 Carum copticum is still cultivated. One point remains to be cleared 

 up : the native country of Carum copticum. It is or has been culti- 

 vated in Egypt, Abyssinia, Arabia, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Persia, 

 Afghanistan, Baluchistan, India, and the Malay Archipelago ; but is 

 nowliere certainly known in a wild state. 



On the same occasion Mr. Josepli Burtt-Davy gave a summary of 

 his paper, ** A Revision of the South African Species of Biantlius:'' 

 He said that the genus Biantlius, as represented in South Africa, has 

 long been troublesome to systematists. *' The characters on which we 

 have to depend for specific delimitation, in this genus, are less 

 amenable to precise definition than is the case in many other genera. 

 To indicate the difficulty which has been experienced by authors in 

 deahng with them, I need only point out that no fewer than ten 

 names have been assigned by botanists at various times to what is 

 obviously one and the same species, seven of the ten being due to 

 wrong identifications with the descriptions of other species. On the 

 other hand, the name B. scaler Thunb. has been assigned at various 

 times to twelve distinct species, owing to a misconception of the 

 plant described by Thunberg. By the courtesy of Prof. Juel of 

 Uppsala (through the Director of the Boyal Botanic Gardens, Kew), 

 I have now had the opportunity of studying the types of Thunberg's 

 four South African species, and thus to clear up the confusion. The 

 Thunberg specimen of B. incurvus Thunb. does not match any 

 South African material at Kew or the British Museum, nor does it 

 answer the description in Thunberg's Flora Capensis. Thunberg 

 himself identifies it on the sheet with B. aliens Ait., but the speci- 

 men does not agree with the type of B. aliens in the British 

 Museum. _ We can only conclude, therefore, that the Thunbero- 

 specmien is not the type from which he drew up his description. In 



