60 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



difficulty in showing that these did not support the theories which 

 had been based upon them. This he was able to do in a style 

 hardly less attractive than that of Allen and his followers and 

 allies ; and even those who were opposed to Gerard's attitude and 

 his conclusions admitted that he spoke with a knowledge which 

 was often lacking to those whom he controverted. He was not, 

 as was sometimes assumed, opposed to the theory of evolution in 

 itself, for, as one of his biographers has said, "he never wished 

 to resist any facts solidly established by scientific research"; 

 but he applied to it the phrase familiar to courts of law in his 

 native land, and regarded it as "not proven." 



Father Gerard's knowledge of British plants was general 

 rather than critical ; he however always noted those of any neigh- 

 bourhood in which he might happen to be, bringing or sending 

 his specimens for comparison and identification to the Depart- 

 ment of Botany, where he was a frequent and always a welcome 

 visitor. In 1900 he was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society 

 and became a frequent attendant at its meetings, often taking part 

 in the discussions thereat; an address given before the Society in 

 1905 on Arum maculatum — a plant in the life-history of which in 

 relation to insects he took particular interest — will be found in this 

 Journal for 1905 (p. 231) ; other contributions from his pen — 

 mostly in the form of reviews, which w T ere always interesting and 

 suggestive — range from 1897 until last year. His most important 

 work was the volume in answer to Haeckel entitled The Old 

 liiddle and the Neioest- Answer, which, originally produced as a 

 six-shilling book, w T ent into a sixpenny edition of which 20,000 

 copies have been printed. 



Of the other aspects of Father Gerard's work an account (with 

 portrait) will be found in The Month for January, to which we are 

 indebted for some of the facts given above. 



SHORT NOTES. 



Polygala Babingtonii, Druce. — In the Journal of Botany, 

 1912, p. 229, Mr. Arthur Bennett published a note on P. vulgaris 

 var. (jrandiflora Bab. in which he suggests that the Irish plant 

 from Ben Bulben should be called P. vulgaris var. Ballii (Nyman). 

 This raises a curious point in nomenclature. P. Ballii Nyman is 

 a nomen nudum. It is based on a specimen in Ball's Herbarium, 

 presumably the above plant, which Ball had labelled in MS. P. 

 I'/' rifolia, but this name had already been given by Humboldt, 

 Bonpland, and Kunth to a South American species. Nyman's 

 name is not only a nomen nudum, but is invalid according to the 

 " Actes," since it is only quoted in synonymy. But the name 

 var. Ballii had already been given to a variety of P. vulgaris 

 which is common in the Faroes by Dr. C. H. Ostenfeld in 

 Warming's Botany of the Faroes, 71, 1901, which he describes 

 and figures, and which, a specimen he sent me proves, is not 

 identical with the Ben Bulben plant. I have gathered plants 



