46 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



SHORT NOTES. 



EoMULEA CoLUMNJE. — It seems to have escaped the notice of 

 British botanists, who now uniformly adopt it, and indeed of 

 botanists generally, that, on the principle of priority, this name 

 cannot stand. As the Index Ketvensis correctly shows, it is 

 synonymous with Ixia parvifiora of Salisbury, who was the first 

 to give it a specific name. Eichter (PI. Europ. i. 252 (1890) ) cites 

 Salisbury's name in his synonymy of Bomulea Columnce, quoting 

 this latter from its first publication by Sebastiani and Mauri (Fl. 

 Eom. Prodr. 18 (1818) ). Bomulea parviflora of Ecklon, cited in 

 the Index (Top. Verz. 19 (1827) ) is a nomen muhim, doubtfully 

 referred by Mr. Baker (in Dyer, Fl. Cap. vi. 1, 42) to his var. 

 parviflora of B. rosea, and therefore cannot stand. Salisbury's 

 description is from a plant " sponte nascentem in Ins. Jersey, 

 legit E. Finlay." Specimens from this collector, of whom I know 

 nothing more — he was apparently the first to find the plant in the 

 Channel Islands — are in Herb. Banks ; the sheet was indorsed by 

 Dryander: "Guernsey, on the sides of hills in dry places; in great 

 quantity near Irwin's Eedoubt. Jersey, near Grouville, in sandy 

 places, Lieut. Finlay." Other specimens were sent from Jersey 

 by Mr. Gosselin, and it was partly from the latter that the 

 material was received upon which the figure in English Botany 

 was based ; a note by Sowerby on the plate, which is embodied 

 in the printed text, explains the composite nature of the figure — 

 " Flower from a root sent by Sir Joseph Banks, and grown by Mr. 

 Anderson at Kensington ; the remainder from a wild Guernsey 

 specimen sent us dry by Mr. Gosselin." The full synonymy of the 

 plant will be found in Eichter (/. c.) ; in an abridged form it runs : 



EOMULEA PARVIFLORA, COmb. nov. 



Ixia parviflora Salisb. Prodr. 34 (1796). 



Ixia Bulhocodium Sm. E. Bot. 2549 (1813), non aliorum. 



Bomulea Columns Seb. & Maur. Fl. Eom. Prodr. 8 (1818) 

 et auct. plur. 



Trichomona Columnce Eeichenb. Fl. Excurs. 83 (1830). 

 It may be noted that both Eichter and the Kew Index erroneously 

 cite the E. Bot. reference as " Trichonema Bulhocodium," and 

 that Ixia Bulhocodium Sm. finds no place in the latter. — James 

 Britten. 



The Adventitious Flora of a Library Court. — It may be 

 of interest to record the following remarkable list of plants that 

 were growing last summer in the back court of the University 

 Library, Cambridge, all — with one exception — having originated 

 from seeds that had been brought by wind or birds. In one small 

 gravel-covered piece of ground, only nineteen feet square, in the 

 south-west corner, with the buildings rising to a considerable 

 height on two sides, there appeared no fewer than six species of 

 Epilobium {E. angustifolium, E. hirsuUim, E. parviflorum, E. 

 montanum, E. roseum and E. ohscur^tm), besides Tilia vulgaris, 

 Acer Bseudo-platanus, Botentilla reptans, Sambucus nigra, Betula 



