SHORT NOTES 179 



chiefly of Surrey plants, doubtless entered during his residence at 

 Albury and Guildford, before he went to Chelsea in 1851. There are 

 also numerous notes on the plants collected in 1853-60 near the Wands- 

 worth steam-boat pier, where were deposited the sif tings and sweep- 

 ings from an adjoining distillery : these formed the subject of a long 

 and characteristically discursive paper from Irvine's pen in the 

 Phytologist for 1859 (iii. 330-350) and are referred to in numerous 

 other communications in the same journal. An interesting bio- 

 graphy of Irvine, by his friend William Pamplin — his companion in 

 the rambles of " W. P." and " A. L." chronicled in the Phytologist 

 (N. S.) — is given in the Gardeners' Chronicle for 1873, p. 1017. 

 Reference is there made to the " pastoral or ministerial office over a 

 branch of the church " held by Irvine during the later part of his 

 life : this was the Catholic Apostolic, or Irvingite, Church, to which 

 community Trimen also belonged. A notice of Irvine from Trimen's 

 pen will he found in this Journal for 1873 (p. 222) in the course of 

 which Irvine's uniform kindness to "young enquirers and beginners" 

 is mentioned. To this I am able to bear personal testimony : in 

 1862-4 I was a frequent visitor to his little house in Upper Manor 

 Street, Chelsea — the back garden of which was full of Sonehus 

 palustris, brought originally from Woolwich — and was indebted to 

 him for the loan of many books from his rather extensive library, the 

 contents of which were offered for sale in catalogues issued in 

 connection with the Botanists'' Chronicle (1863-65) edited and 

 published by Irvine at his residence. His son James shared his 

 father's interest in botany : after his father's death he became a second- 

 hand bookseller, but it is many years since I last heard of him.- — 

 James Britten. 



The Jersey Herniaria. In the account of the genus Herniaria 

 in volume iii. of the Cambridge British Flora, Dr. Moss has followed 

 my arrangement of these plants in Journ. Bot. iii. 330 (1914) in 

 transferring the Jersey form described by Babington from H. glabra 

 to II. ciliata. He retains, however, Babington's varietal name sub- 

 ciliata, which I think is inadmissible. Babington {Primitive Fl. 

 Sam. p. 39) described the plant as H. glabra, dividing it into two 

 varieties, viz. : — a. vera — foliis glabris (St. Aubin's Bay, Guernsey, 

 Alderney), and /3. subciliata— foliis plus minusve ciliatis (in very 

 small quantity at St. Aubin's Bay) ; and owing to its general facies 

 he failed to recognize its relationship with H. ciliata, which he had 

 described as a new species only three years previously. Mr. Lester- 

 Garland, in his Flora of Jersey (p. 73), also treats the plant as 

 H. glabra, and remarks that " Babington's variety subciliata is 

 absurd." There is evidently one form only in Jersey, varying in the 

 ciliation of the leaves, which is quite a minor character ; and Babing- 

 ton's account gives no indication of its real peculiarities. In describ- 

 ing this plant under II. ciliata, Dr. Moss states that it is H. glabra 

 var. subciliata Bab. Prim. Fl. Sarn. p. 39, and that, although the 

 Latin diagnosis is meagre, it is sufficiently described. But the plant 

 is dealt, with by Babington as H . glabra (including both var. vera 

 and var. subciliata), and his points of distinction quoted by Dr. Moss 

 refer not to his variety subciliata, but to his H. glabra as a whole. 



