THE TLOHA OF THE NORTHERN TERRITORY 71 



absent. Here, again, there is a curious absence of system : the names 

 and authorities are usually all in roman t}^3e, but sometimes all in 

 italics. 



There is no need to pursue a criticism which might be indefinitely 

 extended, and which is undertaken in the hope that it may influence 

 future publications from the same source ; but a word must be said 

 as to the Appendix on the Myrtacese, contributed by Mr. Edwin 

 Cheel, which, whether regarded from a literary or a botanical stand- 

 point, seems to us equally remarkable. Melaleuca Leucadendron and 

 its limitations or extensions present much room for differences of 

 opinion, but we cannot think that Mr. Cheel's efforts will do much to 

 elucidate the difficulties presented. Mr. Cheel's views on nomen- 

 clature may be illustrated by a sentence which also indicates his 

 litei-ary style : writing of Melaleuca Leucadendron var. coriacea 

 (M. coriacea Poir.), he says : " I have not seen the original specimens 

 named by Poiret, but have taken up his name for this variety as it 

 seems to be appropriate, and will cause less confusion than would be 

 the case if Cavanilles's name * quinquenervia ' was taken up as it 

 should according to the rules of priority, owing to the fact of other 

 varieties having five-nerves" (p. 297). Such entries as "coriacea, 

 Poir, suppl. 3, 685 (non Salisb.), See. D.C., Prodr." and "var. 

 angustifolia, Linn., Fil. and Pers. (1807) " are examples of citation 

 which might easily be multiplied. 



BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, etc. 



At the meeting of the Linnean Society on Feb. 6, two papers 

 were submitted by Mr. N. E. Brown. The first dealt with a new 

 species of Lohostemon in the Linnean Herbarium, to which Mr. Brown's 

 attention had been directed by Mr. Lacaita. The sheet was inscribed 

 by Linnaeus Echium argentewrtiy but the plant could not be identified 

 with any specimen of that species in the herbaria of the British 

 Museum and Kew, or at the Cape: it is entirely different from 

 E. argenteum Berg. {L. argenteus Buck), with which Linnaeus 

 supposed it to be identical. The plant, localised by Linnaeus 

 "montibus nigris " (Zwartberg) and collected at least 147 years ago, 

 does not appear to have been found by any subsequent collector. 

 In the second paper Mr. Brown described numerous old and new 

 species of Mesemhryanthemum,^Yei2iCm^ the descriptions with a history 

 of the genus from the time of Haworth, who published four accounts 

 of the genus between 1794 and 1821. Haworth's descrij^tions, 

 though mostly from plants cultivated by himself or at Kew, are often 

 insufficient for determination : but a large number of his species are 

 represented in the series of excellent coloured drawings by two 

 young gardeners, George Bond and Thomas Duncannon, who were 

 employed at Kew by Alton between 1822 and 1835 to draw plants 

 cultivated there, and of whom some account will be found in The 

 Garden for Jan. 24, 1880 — reprinted in the third Supplement to this 

 Journal for 1912 (p. 14). The drawings, mostly by Bond (who was 

 alive in 1880), number about 2000, of which about a fourth represent 

 Mesemlry anthem U7n. 



