BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 



119 



north of Balta Sound, which seemed so distinct from the surrounding 

 P. maritime/,, P. lanceolata, and P. Coronopus as to he worth dis- 

 crimination ; it may be compared to P. maritima var. minor Hook., 

 renamed by Boswell Syme as var. liirsuta. A short time in the 

 Orkneys with Col. H. H. Johnston resulted in adding two plants to 

 the Scottish flora— Nitella nidifica in the Loch of Stenness and 

 Ghara canescens. Mr. E. G. Baker considered that the specially 

 noted Plantago did not materially differ from the variety liirsuta of 



At the meeting of the Linnean Society on March 3, Mr. B. T. 



Gunther spoke on certain manuscripts in the Library of Magdalen 



College, Oxford. The manuscripts exhibited were all bequeathed to 



the College by John Goodyer with his botanical library in 1664. 



Goodyer had not been a member of the College himself, but knew it 



through his father having been a tenant of a College farm at Alton 



(where he was born) through his brother-in-law, William Yalden of 



Sheet, who acted as one of the College bailiffs and clerk of the 



account, and through his heir and nephew, Edmund Yalden, who 



became a Demy and Fellow of the College. The manuscripts bound 



in Goodyer's time include his own translations of Theophrastus and 



Dioscorides into English : of the former Sir Arthur Hort published in 



1917 a translation, noticed in this Journal for that year (p. 229) ; 



the latter has not been undertaken by any other scholar either before 



or since. One volume contains a long list of Grasses with their 



synonyms and short descriptions, descriptions of various plants 



copied from Lobel's MSS. (now lost?), and an Index of Flants in 



Goodyer's hand, an Index to Gerard's Herbal (1597) and Stonehouse's 



Catalogue of plants growing in his garden at Darfield in 1640 (see 



Journ. Bot. 1920, 170). The loose papers recently sorted and now 



bound comprise a part of the MS. material for Lobel's projected work, 



Stirpium Illustrationes, now bound in three parts — the first, contain - 



ing the descriptions of 223 species of Grasses, has been bound in a cover 



which appears to have originally held notes Be Fehribus by Lobel's 



master, Kondelet : a volume of the leaves from which How's selection 



from Lobel's Stirpium Illustrationes was printed in 1655 — this is a 



relic of the highest interest, typographical as well as botanical, and 



because it contains Lobel's original imprimatur signed by the President 



of the College of Physicians and other members : an original letter 



from Ardent to Lobel, and How's animadversions on Parkinson. Two 



other volumes contain a Synonymy of Plants used by Goodyer, and 



the remains of a small Hortus Hyemalis in which ferns and mosses 



were preserved. Goodyer's miscellaneous papers bear out the high 



reputation in which he was held by his contemporaries— Johnson, 



Merret, Parkinson, etc. : they include dated descriptions of some 90 



new or 'rare species of plants either collected by him or flowered in 



his gardens ; early lists of plants grown in the gardens of William 



Coys in Essex in 1616, which is, therefore, the second English 



garden-list known ; of Franqueville, Gibbs, Parkinson ; and probably 



in his own garden at Droxford, Hants, where he lived until he moved 



to Petersfield on his marriage. Among other interesting details, 



Mr. Gunther mentioned that Mr. " Coel," Lobel's son-in-law, was 



