208 



THE .TOrn.VAL OF HUT WV 



over the ridges in the shires or on hanks on the uplands the Cinque- 

 t'oil scrambles over the scrubby grass, lending a new shapeliness to the 

 outlines of the meadow lands with their stereotyped fascicles of short- 

 stemmed grasses " (ii. 4). 



The descriptions are on the whole well done, and contain notes on 

 fertilisation and kindred matters which, if not original, are carefully 

 compiled ; we are surprised to find no reference to the viviparous 

 leaves and proliferous flowers of Cardamine pratensis. It is not easy 

 to see on what principle the species have been chosen — Camelina 

 sativa and Cynosurus ecliinatits, with others whose claims to in- 

 clusion among " British wild (lowers " are equally slight, seem out of 

 place when only 350 species are selected for detailed description. 

 The long lists of popular names are taken bodily and unintelligent! v 

 from the Dictionary of English Plant-Names] and we suspect the 

 lists of insect visitors and fungus-pests are from some equally con- 

 venient source: they contribute materially to tilling the book— under 

 the Crab-Apple (iii. 174) more than half the page is occupied by 

 these three lists. We referred to this matter as' it relates to plant- 

 names in this Journal for 1914 (p. 80), so there is no need to pursue 

 it, nor need we animadvert on the scraps of folk-lore, quotations from 

 "a writer "and the like, mostly from Mr. Horwood's earlier work. 

 lie is at his worst when dealing with ecclesiastical matters: what 

 can be more absurd than this : " Formerly young women dressed in 

 white and walked in procession on the FeaWof Purification, saving: 

 ' The snowdrop in purest white array 

 First rears her head on Candlemas Day ' " (iii. 125) 



the lines being a quotation from Forster's Perennial Calendar, 

 published in 1824? or that Barbarea "was formerly said to have 

 formed the Crown of Thorns," — it is only fair to say that he adds 

 "but this seems unlikely " (iii. 135); doubtless its' name "Herb 

 Trinity" led to the (false) inference that the Heartsease " was used 

 as a decoration on Trinity Sunday" (ii. 109). These are small 

 matters, but newspapers and popular books are flooded with rubbish 

 of this kind, and Mr. Horwood has given them a mine whence they 

 may draw. 



The Bibliography appended to the fifth volume could hardly have 

 been less useful had it been the wish of its compiler to make it so. 

 There is nothing to show whether an entry relates to a volume, a 

 pamphlet, or a paper in a magazine ; no dates are given ; and the 

 classification is of the strangest — thus, under "Names of Plants, 

 Nomenclature, etc." we find Lindley's Introduction to Botany, 

 Coles's Art of Simpling, Linnseus's Species and Genera, Taylor's 

 Names of Places, and Gerard's Herball ; Pearson's Hepaticce, 

 West's Alyce, the Student's Handbook of Mosses appear under 

 "General British Floras"; few of the volumes entered under 

 "Folk Lore" have any relation to plants (Mrs. Lincoln's " Botany " 

 (American) is among them) ; local Floras are entirely absent. The 

 references to books in the Introduction to vol. vi. suggest doubts 

 as to the author's acquaintance with the volumes he enumerates — the 

 Journal of Botany, he tells us, " is largely concerned with nomen- 

 clature," and Mr. Hiern's " Index Abcedari'us " (twice so printed ) is 



