PRODROMUS FLOR/E BRITANNIC^: 429 



This last-named work is not only most interesting in itself, but 

 must prove of the utmost value to the future writer of the Flora of 

 the county — a task which at one time it was hoped Mr. Mathews 

 would himself have undertaken, and for which his intimate know- 

 ledge of the county and its plants so eminently fitted him, until 

 his long illness showed such a work to be impossible. No notice 

 of Mr. Mathews would be complete without some mention of the 

 willing and valuable help that he accorded to those less informed 

 than himself. For such help, as well as for many kindnesses, I 

 was often indebted to him, and notably for the assistance he gave 

 in furnishing careful translations from continental writers when 

 such were likely to be useful. — R. F. Towndrow. 



[Mrs. Mathews informs us that her late husband's botanical and 

 geological interests began in his boyhood. His botanical collections 

 were sent to Kew shortly before his death, the Worcestershire 

 plants being transferred thence to Worcester. Mathews's geological 

 collections were presented in 1899 to Mason College, Birmingham ; 

 the statement that he sent plants to Queen's College is erroneous. — 

 Ed. Journ. Bot.] 



NOTICE OF BOOK, 



Prodromiis Flone Biitannkce. Part 2. By F. N. Williams. Price 

 2s. 2d. post free, from the author, 181, High Street, Brent- 

 ford. Nov. 1901. 



British botanists will welcome the second part of this new 

 flora, which is just ready ; they will rejoice to find that Mr. Williams 

 is proceeding apace with his useful and important work. It con- 

 tains 79 species of Compodtcc belonging to 29 genera, and occupies 

 58 large octavo pages. While following the plan exhibited in the 

 first (or specimen) part, there is here a fuller amount of detail, 

 and, where necessary, more attention has been paid to the synonymy 

 of the species ; thus the average space devoted to each plant is con- 

 siderably more, and on the scale of the two parts, taken together, 

 the descriptions, &c., of all the British flowerng plants seem 

 hkely to require about 1260 pages, of which 74 pages, or about 

 one- seventeenth of the whole, are now done. 



On the inner pages of the wrapper Mr. Williams refers to and 

 discusses the difficulty or inexpediency of separating in local floras 

 native plants from those long naturalized. "In British floras 

 generally, only those species are considered naturalized whose date 

 of appearance in these islands can be approximately fixed. On the 

 other hand, those who especially devote their attention to aliens, 

 colonists, and denizens, would go so far as to exclude not only the 

 species commonly met with on cultivated ground, but also those 

 usually found on the borders of fields and by road-sides, and would 

 even remove from the category of natives such a common species 

 as Lainium album. In the present contribution to British botany, 

 the plants whose names are italicized in the last edition of the 

 London Catalof/iie are to a great extent not included." 



Journal of Botany. — Vol. 39. [Dec. 1901.] 2 i 



