SHORT NOTES 



77 



indirectly to Gordon that Australia is indebted for its great wool 

 industry, as liis widow in 1795 sold to the commanders of the 

 Siipply and BoUance sloops of war some merino sheep which were 

 taken to Australia to Captain John Macarthur, who was then 

 experimenting in wool production in New South Wales. 



A warm appreciation of Gordon will be found in John White's 

 Journal of a Voyage to Ncio South Wales (1790), p. 90. White 

 visited Gordon at the Cape in 1787; his garden, he says, displays 

 " not only the taste and ingenuity of the gardener, but the skill 

 and knowledge of the botanist." " The Colonel is a man of 

 science of an active and well-cultivated genius, who appropriates 

 those hours he can spare from his military duties (in which he is 

 said to excel) to a perusal of the book of nature and researches 

 after useful knowledge." It was his intention " to publish the 

 observations and remarks which have been the result of his 

 researches," and it is to be regretted that this intention was 

 never carried out, as we may share White's conviction that Gordon 

 had " made himself better acquainted with the subject, and pene- 

 trated farther into the interior parts, than any traveller or 

 naturalist that [had then] visited the Cape." It is to be hoped 

 that the collection of Gordon's drawings may find its way into 

 the possession of someone who will see that lists of the species 

 collected by him are drawn up by competent hands. 



SHOBT NOTES. 



Ptilota plumosa Ag. in Devon (p. 35). — Mr. A. D. Cotton, 

 writing of Ptilota plumosa and two other algae, says that " none of 

 them are found in any part of the English Channel. ... it was 

 not easy to understand why these plants should not extend by 

 way of the Welsh coast to Devon and Cornwall " ; and in a foot- 

 note to p. 39 says that a fragment of a frond of the Ptilota 

 inscribed " Ilfracombe, E. T." occurs in Prof. Phillips's collection, 

 but " as the plant does not occur in this well- worked region, the 

 locahty given must be regarded as erroneous." In July, 1907, I 

 found, about four miles east of Ilfracombe, a plant I sent to Mr. 

 E. M. Holmes, which he returned to me labelled, " It certainly is 

 Ptilota plumosa," with drawings made by him on the back to 

 show its structure as compared with that of P. elegans. — C. E. 

 Larter. 



A Correction (p. 43). — The interviewer from the Morning 

 Post who visited me on Jan. 13th, in writing out his notes has 

 mixed up two entirely distinct statements. He asked me. How 

 many plants are there in Tropical Africa? I told him it was 

 impossible to estimate the number, because many districts had 

 not been explored yet, and gave him an illustration of this — Mr. 

 and Mrs. Amaury Talbot's collection from Southern Nigeria 

 recently worked up and published by the botanists of the Natural 

 History Museum. This contained 600 numbers, of which 150 



