KI.ORF. I'OPUT.AIRK. V.TC . 147 



volume fills nearly three pages, so that there must already be a 

 considerable accumulation of information supplementary to the two 

 earlier parts. It is of course of the essence of a work of this kind 

 that finality can never be attained ; a fact which none know better 

 than the compilers themselves. 



In the present instalment more than a hundred pages are devoted 

 to the Vine, which is treated under numerous heads — the plant as a 

 whole ; its various parts ; the names of its various cultivated forms ; 

 proverbs, popular sayings and customs connected with its growth 

 and with the seasons which affect it ; and a long list of books in 

 which some of these points are amplified. 



We are still unable to discover the principle upon which M. 

 Rolland includes or excludes names. The most trivial variants of 

 French names are included, but with regard to other countries, if 

 England may be taken as an illustration, a process of exclusion is 

 carried out. For example, only two of the eight names given in the 

 Dictionary of Enqlisk Plant-Names for Hijpericum cahjcinum are taken 

 up by M. Rolland; of Geranium sylvaticiun, two out of four; of 

 Malva sylvestris, five out of seventeen, many of which, however, are 

 mere variants : and this process of selection seems to be pretty 

 generally adopted. It is curious, by the way, that so conspicuous 

 a plant as the Hypericum, mentioned should have but one popular 

 French name, and that only at Quimper ; the other French name 

 given — " millepertuis a grandes fleurs " — is from a book, and sug- 

 gests the inquiry as to iiow far it is desirable to include obviously 

 manufactured titles in a work of this kind. 



As we have said before, it is to be regretted that M. Rolland 

 does not submit his proofs to some botanist for revision as to the 

 names given to the plants. He includes, for example, the genus 

 Elatine in Caryophyllaceae, and gives as English names for it, on 

 the authority of Ray, ♦' fluellin, speedwell," which of course the 

 English botanist applied to Linaria Elatine and L. spuria. He 

 includes in the Tiliaceous genus Corchorus, C. japonicus, which is 

 an old name for Kcrria japonica in RosaceaB. We note a few 

 misprints—^, g. on p. 180 " Saint Columbus- wort " should be 

 *' Columba's wort." 



M. Rolland quotes freely from Mr. Cameron's Gaelic Names of 

 Plants — a work which has been reviewed in this Journal. The 

 cautionary attitude which we felt it necessary to adopt with regard 

 to Mr. Cameron's work is more than justified by the criticisms 

 passed upon it by Father Edmund Hogan in his Gaelic Names of 

 Herbs. Father Hogan, however, is wrong in supposing that Mr. 

 Cameron is dead, and that his work is no longer on sale ; the new 

 edition, published last year, was noticed in this Journal for 1900, 

 p. 450. Father Hogan's list will be far more useful to M. Rolland 

 than Mr. Cameron's book, but he may find some difficulty in 

 determining the hot mical synonyms of the plants indicated by 

 their EngUsh equivalents, and in the transliteration of the Gaelic 

 characters in which Father Hogan prints his names. It is a 

 scholarly piece of work, and the compiler has brought together not 



