206 I'll K JOUBN \l. OF BOT W V 



Loeselii Rich, where it is abundant. It occurs with Liparis on the 

 sand-dunes in Belgium, Holland, and Normandy, but is not on record 

 for the twenty-three Dutch islands, on six of which Liparis is found. 

 Since the publication of Topographical Botany (1883), it has been 

 recorded from four English counties. In the Flora of Dorset it is 

 named only as a casual, but the Rev. E. F. Linton found it in 1900 

 on " Sandy heathland pasture near Parkestone." It may be native 

 on Minehead Warren, Somerset. I have it from Kingsley, N. Hants, 

 May 1900 (Miss S. Smyth), and from a fallow Held, Send, Guildford, 

 Surrey, 1883 (Mr. Howse). 1 do not know the grade of Mr. Hilton's 

 Sussex record. The luxuriance of the specimens is no guide as to 

 status ; in ordinary seasons in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Kent it is often 

 small and sparsely branched, but in Suffolk in the wet season of 

 1879, when I gathered Veronica verna L. five inches high and 

 much branched, the Silene was large and much branched, quite unlike 

 its usual form. Syme (E. Bot. vi. 155 (1866)) gives " 1 to 3 inches 

 high" for the Veronica. — Arthur Bennett. 



Spurless Columbine. I have recently seen some curious 

 Columbine flowers in a friend's garden in Herefordshire, where many 

 beautiful forms, both long and short spurred, are grown. On one 

 plant, pink-flowered, there is a complete absence of spurs on the 

 petals; the five petals are exactly like the five sepals, and the whole 

 ten portions of the perianth are laid out perfectly flat at the top of 

 the flower-stalk like a ten-rayed star, producing a most striking and 

 unusual effect. In other plants which I inspected, some pink, some 

 blue, I found a varying number of spurs: one, two, or three petals 

 bearing spurs; four, three, or two with no spurs. — Ei.eonora 

 Armttage. 



[The monstrosity is not, we think, very uncommon : see Wors- 

 dell's Principles of Plant-Teratology, ii. 141, where the plant is 

 called Aquilegia vulgaris var. stellata. — -En. Jotjrn. Bot.] 



Musk. In The Garden for June 25 (p. 322), Mr. H. S. Bart- 

 lett, of Shooter's Hill, writes that some plants of Musk potted at the 

 end of last summer, which remained in an old greenhouse during the 

 winter, broke into leaf in April and flowered in May, and filled the 

 greenhouse with scent, recalling that of plants grown in cottage 

 windows in 1862-61. He suggests that the similar conditions may 

 have developed the scent, and adds : " I do not remember Musk being 

 grown out of doors in those days." But about that period the plant 

 was a staple and popular commodity in the small gardens of the 

 pensioners at Chelsea Hospital, who did a considerable trade by 

 selling little bunches of flowers, in which Southernwood was a pro- 

 minent feature, and small pots, each containing a plant of Musk 

 which was abundantly scented. — James Britten. 



BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, etc. 



At the meeting of the Linnean Soeiety on June 16, Prof. A. H. 

 Reginald Buller gave a discourse "Upon the Ocellus function of the Sub- 

 sporangial Swelling of Piloboh/s.' n He stated that the subsporangial 

 swelling of Pilobolus functions, not merely as part of a squirting 

 apparatus, but also as an ocellus, which receives the heliotropie 



