SHOET NOTE 91 



siioirr NOTE. 



Bedfordsiiihe Plajsts. — Last June I met with a small patch of 

 Carex divisa in a damp pasture by a foot-jiath in Woburn Park, 

 about a quarter of a mile north of the Abbe}". All the i)lants I saw 

 were slender in habit, and a})pear to come under the var. cliceto- 

 'phylla Kiikenthal (6'. clia'tophyUa Steudel), but ripe fruit is needed 

 to decide the point, and I did not i^-athcr the plant later in the year. 

 This, so far as I am aware, is the first certain record for Bedfordshire ; 

 tiiere is no mention of it in Abl)ot's Flora, nor by any subsequent 

 writer on the plants of the county, and the sedge recorded as this 

 from Plitwick JVlarsh some 3^ ears ago turned out to be only C. ovalis 

 {vide specimen in Herb. Mus. Brit.). Inland localities for G. divisa 

 arc rare — indeed, the i^ritish books do not indicate that it is ever 

 found far away from the sea. It has, however, been recently gathered 

 on the banks of the Thames between Putney and Barnes, and I have 

 also seen specimens obtained in 1878 from near Hampstead Heath. In 

 the Flora of Middlesex it is mentioned on the authority of L. W. 

 Dillwyn as being plentiful in the Isle of Hogs. In West Gloucester 

 it has been found in marshy ])asture near the Wye at Beachley. — 

 Hypericum duhium Leers. In the autumn of 1918 I saw two or 

 three plants by the roadside near Little Brickhill, on the borders of 

 Beds and Bucks. Abbot (Fl. Beds. p. 167) states that it was found 

 by Mr. Vaux near Luton, but there is no subsequent record. — Cala- 

 magrostis E^iiyeios, a rare grass in Bedfordshire, was seen last year 

 in some quantity by the side of a ride in the Woburn Evergreens. — 

 A. Bruce Jacicson. 



KEVIEWS. 



Outlines of the History of Botany. By E. J. HARTEY-Giusoii, 

 D.L., M.A. Hemy 8vo, cloth, pp. x, 274: price \0s. net. 

 London : A. & C. Black. 1919. 



Few works on Botany could he more opportune at the pi-esent 

 time than this handy volume, and all botanical students will be 

 grateful to Professor Harvey-Gibson for finding the time, during a 

 long period of war-work, for putting together such a charming col- 

 lection of essays on the History of Botany, bringing the subject up to 

 recent times. 



The older standard work on the subject, that of Sachs (1875), 

 although a classic in its day, stopped short at 1860, and hence fails to 

 visualize the rapid extension of more modern Botany, notwithstanding 

 the elegance of the English translation by H. E. Garnsey (1890); 

 and has even become tedious to read in view of the prosy speculative 

 and philosophical attitude of the older German writers, with whom it 

 was more particularly concerned ; while the prolix compilation of 

 Beynolds Green (1909), written as a sequel to bring it up to 1900, 

 also fails to supply the deficiency. 



Professor Harvey-Gibson's work has the advantage of having been 

 tried on a class of students, and may be said to be written from the 

 standpoint of the rising generation, to whom discussion of such 



