tINNEAN IIEEUARIUM. 



23 



llartuian in his prefiice says : — " One of these signs very often 

 occurs, either with a specific name or alone, what their meaning is, 

 has not yet been made out ; by comparison they seem neitlier to 

 indicate locaUties, person's names, the duration of the plants, 

 annual, biennial, perennial or the like," but he also points out 

 that jN'o. 1! above is confined to Siberian plants. My own first 

 reference to the herbarium, in August 1874, made me ask 

 Mr. Kippist, the then Librarian, what the sign (No. 4) meant, 

 and he owned that he did iiot know, nor did anyone else. 



The latest guess was tiiat made a lew years ago by Pastor 

 Enauder ; his view is :— that they are certainly Kussian letters, 

 aud thus may be regarded as pointing to J. P. Falck, born in 

 Westgotland in the year 1732 oi- 1733, professor at the Medical 

 College in St. Petersburg, with whom Linnc stood in close relation 

 (Salices, p. 11). Now although the sign No. 4 may be taken as the 

 Greek e, it cannot stand for ^, and No. 1 resembles no current 

 Eussian letter whatever. This speculation therefore does not 

 help us. 



Tills tantalizing uncertainty therefore was a subsidiary point 

 that I set myself on beginning my investigation of the herbarium 

 to find out, where possible, what these puzzling memoranda 

 meant. I therefore copied them each time they occurred, and 

 at the end, I had lists of plants bearing the cryptic signs. 13y 

 comparison of the whole material thus obtained, I was able to set 

 out the meaning of most of the signs occurring, thus : — 



No. 1. Collected by Gerber, principally in the district of the 

 river Don or Astrachan. 



No. 2. From Siberia, communicated by Gmeliu, 



No. 3. From Kamtschatka, collected by Steller. 



No. 4, Hasselquist's plants, as also No. 6. 



No. 5. Almost certainly Osbeck ; see No. 9. 



No. 6, Hasselquist, the sign appears to be derived from "Habitat 

 in Oriente." I have tried to discover if there was any 

 reason why two signs for one collector were employed, 

 but so far fruitlessly. 



No. 7. Unknown ; applied to Bellis annua, a Sisijmhriuvi, a 

 Trhjonella, and an unnamed specimen of Conferva. 



No. 8 is used as meaning "aristate,"' and 



No. 9 for " muticous," but the terms seem sometimes loosely 

 applied, aud in one case misapplied ; the latter sign is 

 also confused with Osbeck, aud with for annual. 



No. 10. May be a long S, and stand for " suecia " ; a cross-stroke 

 is sometimes present ; Linnc often used a small initial, 

 as " Stockholm." 



No. 11. Occurs in relation to Anthericum cahjculatum, Ornitho- 

 ijaJum minimum, Salix rosmarinifolia , and Sisymbrium 

 altissimum. With regard to the third, Enander prints 

 the sign as ]) , which means silver to the mineralogist, 

 and may refer to a silvery appearance of the specimen. 



