SHOKT >;OTES 191 



1 still see no true riparia. The hybrid bears a general resemblance to 

 small G. riparia, but it can sometimes be distinguished at sight by 

 the foliage, which is green and not glaucous, much narrower and more 

 channelled, and far smoother at the margins. It sends up from the 

 creeping rootstook small clumps of leaves of very distinct habit, and 

 apparently without a flowering-spike for a year or two. C. evoluta 

 should be searched for in England where C. lasiocarpa (C. Jili- 

 formis L.) and C riparia occur in the same district. — H. S. 

 Thompson. 



Veronica Crista-galli (p. 155). This plant was recorded from 

 the Sussex locality mentioned by Mr. W. B. Hemsley in this Journal 

 for 1906, p. 49. This interesting Eastern species seems Avell able to 

 hold its own amongst our native plants, as the late Mr. Tliomas 

 Hilton noted the plant at Hentield in 1S88. — C. E. Salmon. 



BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, etc. 



Matthew B. Slateb, who died at Malton, Yorkshire, in Feb- 

 ruarjf last, at the age of 88, succeeded his father as a nurseryman and 

 landscape gardener at Malton, but for many years had taken no active 

 part in the business. He was a man of kindly and genial disposition, 

 much liked by his large circle of acquaintance ; until within the last few 

 years he was in the habit of paying a yearly visit to London, in summer, 

 and always arranged to spend an afternoon or evening Avith his old 

 Yorkshire acquaintance, Dr. Braithwaite at Clapham, and J. Gr. Baker 

 at Kew. Slater communicated a number of localities to Mr. J. F. 

 llobinson for his Flora of the East Biding. He was a great friend of 

 Kichard Spruce ; when the latter came back from South America, he 

 settled at the village of Welburn, near Castle How^ard. Spruce was 

 lonely, and more or less of an invalid, and Slater made a point of going 

 over to see and cheer him once a week. He was appointed Spruce's 

 executor, and placed all the papers relating to his South American 

 travels in the hands of Dr. Alfred Bussell Wallace, Mho had gone 

 over a good deal of the same ground. Wallace arranged, and added 

 to them, and in 1908 published them in two volumes as Notes of a 

 Botanist on the Amazon and Andes (see Journ. Bot. 1909, 149). 

 Slater edited the mosses for a second edition of J. Gr. Baker's North 

 Yorkshire; the district had been explored by several competent 

 men such as Mr. Ingham of York, Mr. Anderson of Whitby, 

 Mr. Barnes of Harrogate, and by Slater himself : as a result, over 

 a hundred species were added to the list, as well as the Hepatics, 

 which were not contained in the first edition. Slater also took a 

 prominent part in founding the Malton Naturalists' Society in 1880: 

 in 1889 he became a Fellow of the Linnean Society. A portrait 

 with brief biography is given in The Naturalist for March. — J. G. B. 



At the meeting of the Linnean Society on 2nd May, 1918, 

 Dr. Marie Stopes gaye the substance of her paper, ^' Bennettites 

 Scottii,^' sp. nov., a Eurojiean Petrifaction with foliage," as follows : — 

 A new species of Bciinctfites is described, cxtcrnallv very like a 



