EIJfFLUSS DER KULTUll AUF DIE FLORA 157 



with the open sea of the Gulf of Finland by the broad channel of the 

 Neva on its south (Russian) side. The region north-west of the lake 

 is the most fertile tract in Finland, and the leading crops in the order 

 of their importance include rye, barley, oats, and potatoes. 



The district which forms the subject-matter of this elaborate 

 memoir lies between 61'' 15-62^ 25' lat. and 30° 15-32'' 50' long. 

 Its greatest length is about 135 kilometres from west to east, and its 

 breadth is 130 kilometres from south to north, embracing the greater 

 part of the Ian of Nyland and a small portion of the Ian of Viborg. 

 The superficial strata are formed chietly of schist and gneiss, and 

 have a varied flora associated with its cultivated soil. The area is 

 fairly populated (for Finland), with about 15 persons to the square 

 kilometre. 



In the course of eleven chapters (or sections) the subject-matter 

 is treated with a thoroughness unusual in such memoirs, which one 

 formerly associated with German methods of investigation, luitil 

 analysis showed to what extent German monographs are infarcted to 

 stodginess with redundant descriptions, rejjetitions, plagiarism, and 

 rounding off. The subjects consecutively dealt with include : hydro- 

 graphy, climate, agricultural industry, crops, cultivated plants, 

 natural plant-associations (in forests, on moorland, on rocks and 

 stony soil, banks and slopes, and aquatic), artificial and cultivated 

 plant-associations, and the semi-natural plant-associations of field- 

 borders, roadsides, and the neighbourhood of dwellings, hemero- 

 philous plants, hemerodiaphorous plants, hemerophobous plants, tlie 

 relative statistics of anthropocorous species and apophytes, virginal 

 and sterile forms in the natural state and when associated with cro]js 

 and imported grain, the parasitism of cryptogamic plants on both 

 native flowering plants and on crops, and lastly the influence of culti- 

 vation on the relative distribution and modification of all these 

 controlling factors. All this is discussed with the cosmopolitan 

 detachment of mind which the man of science concentrates on his 

 limited subject in the course of original research — even in the reign 

 of Armageddon ! 



The list of authors cited occupies thirteen pages — mostly Swedish, 

 Finnish, and German. Only a single English work is cited, Watson's 

 Cyhele Britannica — though another is quoted secondhand from a 

 notice in tlie Botanisches Centralhlatf. 



As an instance of the critical grouping of Anthropochorous sjiecies, 

 among those which are more or less wideh^ distributed through all 

 the cultivated areas are : Boa annua, Silene hjlafa, Bianthi/s del- 

 toides, Stellaria media, and Alchemilla i^astoralis. Amf)ng those 

 whose natural extension and increase seem to be restricted by the 

 incursion of cultivation, sometimes even choking them out, are : 

 Alopecurus prntciisis, TJrtica urens, Sperqidaria canq^estris, Scleran- 

 thus annuns, Silene dichofoma, and Brassica arvensis. 



The Natural History Society of Helsingfors, founded in 1848, 

 began Math the modest Notiscr, followed by the more ambitiov s 

 Acta in 1875. Through its chaimels have issued most of tlie good 

 scientific work, or ~ rather the account of it, undertaken by the 



