IIEXUIKITA CEKF 297 



HENRIETTA CERF. 



(1810-1877) 



Those who are in the habit of turning over the pages of old 

 periodicals for purposes of reference must be aware of the difficulty of 

 identifying the authors of communications signed only with initials 

 or entirely anonymous. At the time of publication, identification, 

 at any rate in the former case, is not difficult ; but as time goes on, 

 and folks go off, such identification becomes more and more troul)le- 

 some, if not actually impossible. In this Journal the use of initials 

 has almost been confined to reviews, and of these it is proposed to 

 publish when occasion offers the list of identifications already 

 prepared. 



The matter was lately brought prominently to my notice on refer- 

 ring to the New Series of the Plujtohujhl (18.3.3-61) — perhaps the woist 

 indexed of many badly indexed journals, carrying on, as it does, the 

 tradition which makes the contents of the Hooker Journals practically 

 inaccessible — in which to many articles and notes only initials are 

 appended. The notes are often of so trivial a nature that it is hardly 

 necessary to trouble about them ; but the interest of some of the 

 former is sufficient to provoke inquiry. Of this I have recently had 

 an example in the case of " H. C," who contributed to vols. iii. and iv. 

 of that periodical notes on Belgian plants, and to vol. v. (pp. 38-45, 

 70-72) a "List of Plants collected about Dover, Walmer, Folkestone, 

 and Sandgate," to which the ¥lora of Kent mukes no special reference. 

 The writer, who referred to Crepin as a correspondent, was evidently a 

 competent botanist, but I failed to identify the initials with those of 

 any British botanist of the period : it was only when I noticed, on the 

 page last mentioned, a reference by the editor (Alexander Irvine) to 

 "the fair authoress," that a clue was supplied. This Dr. Daydon 

 Jackson successfully followed up, finding in this Journal for 1877 

 (p. 380) a brief reference to her death, and a longer notice by 

 Crepin in Bull. Soc. Roy. de Belgique of the same year (xvi. 54), 

 part of which it seems worth while to reproduce : 



" Mademoiselle Henrietta Cerf, nee a la Jamaique le 10 fevrier 

 1810 et morte a Bruxelles le 22 octobre 1877, etait une dame d'un 

 esprit tres-cultive et dont les connaissances en botanique etaient 

 fort etendues. Elle ne borna pas ses recherches a la^ botanique 

 rurale; mais elle suivit regulierement les progres faits par les 

 questions les plus elevees de la science. Sa bibliotheque, enrichie 

 des traites les plus savants publies en Angleterre, en Allemagne, en 

 France, etc., temoigne d'un gout tres-prononce pour la botanique. 

 Mademoiselle Cerf a etudie avec le plus grand soin la flore de nos 

 diverses provinces. Pendant un sejour de plusieurs annees qu elle fit, 

 avec sa famille, au chateau de Bloquement, pres de Dinant, elle eut 

 Toccasion d'explorer Tune des parties les plus riches de la vallee de 

 la Meuse." The plants then noted as the result of her observa- 

 tions are given in her papers in Phyt. iii. 161-4, iv. 33-4; on the last 

 page she speaks of "our village of'^Houx," in which presumably the 

 Journal of Botany.— Vol. 60. [October, 1022.] x 



