280 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



of Llandriiidod, nearly all of which I identified. The Carnm is 

 included, and would, I think, be first record for the county. — 

 Wm. a. Clarke. 



The Plates of ' English Botany,' ed. 3 (p. 245). — Most of the 

 fresh plates and alterations in the third edition of FiujUsh Botany 

 w^ere done by J. E. Sowerby. After his death, in 1870, Fitch did 

 some. For the Supplement, N. E. Brown drew his own plates. — 

 J. G. Baker. 



NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



Flora Capensis. Vol. v. Part i. Acanthacepe by C. B. Clarke ; 

 Selagineae by E. A. Rolfe ; Verbenace^ by H. H. W. Pear- 

 son. 8vo, pp. 224. London : Lovell Beeve. Price 9s. net. 



The gratifying progress now making by the Flora Capensis 

 justifies the hope that the work may be completed within half 

 a century of the date of its commencement. It is, of course, 

 obvious that by that time the earlier volumes will be, as indeed 

 they are already, practically useless as an enumeration of South 

 African plants — it will be remembered that a period of more than 

 thirty years elapsed between the issue of the third volume in 1805 

 and the resumption of the work in 1896; but it may be hoped that 

 steps are being taken for a reissue of these, brought up to the 

 standard of our present knowledge. 



The part just issued is mainly the work of experts. Mr. C. B. 

 Clarke had previously monographed the Acanthaceoi for the Flora 

 of Tropical Africa ; and Mr. Rolfe has for many years made the 

 SelaginecR his own. Mr. H. H. Pearson's treatment of the VerbenacecF. 

 is in marked contrast to the remainder of the work in the length of 

 the descriptions, which seems to us in many instances to be greatly 

 in excess of what is needed in a handbook such as we always under- 

 stood to be aimed at by the originators of the series of colonial 

 floras. This is not only noticeable in genera containing novelties 

 and critical species, such as Vitex, where 9 species occupy 6^ pages, 

 but in genera such as Lippia, where so wide-spread a weed as 

 L. nodijiora takes more than half a page to describe. This mode 

 of treatment is in striking contrast with Mr. Clarke's work, in 

 which some new species are disposed of in four, three, or even in 

 two — e. g. Justicia cheirantliifolia — lines. Making every allowance 

 for divergence of treatment, we should have thought that something 

 more nearly approaching uniformity might have been secured by 

 the editor of the later parts of the Flora, as it was by Harvey in 

 the earlier volumes. 



It is to be regretted that certain bibliographical eccentricities to 

 which we called attention in noticing earlier portions of the work 

 are still allowed to disfigure its pages. The placing in brackets of 

 the name of the authority for a species is not only unusual, but 

 absolutely misleading, as it has now a generally recognized and 

 different significance. It is true that Harvey so printed the names 



