FRANCES ARABELLA ROWDEtf 331 



a second edition appeared in 1812 and a third in 1818. This was 

 doubtless owing to the fact, which may also account for the long 

 list of subscribers, that the author occupied an important position at 

 what was evidently a fashionable ladies' school, at 22 (later trans- 

 ferred to no. 33) Hans Place, Sloane Street, Chelsea, at which, 

 among other well-known folk, Lady Bulwer Lytton, Mrs. S. C. Hall, 

 Mary Russell Mitford, and Letitia Elizabeth Landon were educated. 

 From references in the ' Lives ' of the two latter, by A. Gr. L'Estrange 

 and Laman Blanchard respectively, and from T. Crofton Croker's 

 A Walk from London to Fiilham, we learn that the school (which 

 a note in the Introduction to Botany, p. 87, shows was first estab- 

 lished at Heading) was "kept by M. St. Quentin (or Quintin), a 

 well-born, well-educated, and well-looking French emigrant," who 

 " had been Secretary to the Comte de Moustiers," and was " one of 

 the last, if not the last, of the ambassadors of Louis Seize to the 

 Court of St. James's. He was assisted, or rather chaperoned, in 

 his undertaking by his wife, a good-natured red-faced Frenchwoman, 

 and by Miss Bowden, an accomplished young lady, the daughter and 

 sister of clergymen, who had been for some years governess in the 

 family of Lord Bessborough, and who superintended the general 

 course of study" (L'Estrange). A long and attractive description 

 of " Fanny Bowden," as she was called, is quoted from Miss Mitford, 

 who for many years visited her old teachers ; Laman Blanchard 

 describes Miss Bowden as "herself a poettss and otherwise highly 

 accomplished " : she published in 1810 a poem entitled The Pleasures 

 of Friendship. 



After the death of his wife, M. St. Quentin seems to have resumed 

 his title and returned to France ; Blanchard says that Miss Bowden 

 " became Countess St. Quentin and died in the neighbourhood of 

 Paris " : this must have been before 18-11, the date of the book from 

 which this extract is taken. 



REVIEWS. 



Lichens. By Annie Lorrain Smith, F.L.S. Demy 8vo, cloth, 

 pp. 4G4, 135 figs. 55s. University Press, Cambridge, 1921. 



Both the Cambridge Press and Miss Smith are to be congratulated 

 on the appearance of this the second issue of the Cambridge Botanical 

 Handbook Series commenced before the war : the former in that they 

 have emerged beyond the horizon of the Oxford Press with its bias 

 for the translation of German books, and the latter for the comple- 

 tion of a monumental volume on her special subject which marks the 

 culmination of her previously well-known and standard studies of 

 British Lichens. 



The pursuit of Lichenology, although one of the most interesting 

 backwaters of modern botany, has been largely relegated to collectors 

 and systematists ; and beyond a casual recognition of phenomena of 

 4 symbiosis,' illustrated by some elementary type, students have little 

 knowledge of the range and beauty of this strangely isolated series 

 of plant-forms, their great importance in the flora of the world as a 

 whole, and the mystery still underlying their origin. 



