106 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



cultivated by the author; " Gansange " is given as collector of 

 the "Ventor" and Loch Leven specimens. The manner in 

 which the references to plants, as well as to books, are printed 

 is needlessly extravagant, but to this we shall return later. The 

 abbreviations employed, so far as explained, are on pp. 1 and 20, 

 those for books cited (which are often unsatisfactory— e.g., 

 " Hdk." for Handbook) are not given at all, so that the unini- 

 tiated may be puzzled by such extreme brevities as "J.L.S.", 

 especially as he will not find the Journal of the Linnean Society 

 under " J " in the bibliography, although the Journal of the Royal 

 Horticultural Society appears under that letter. The bibliography 

 itself might be improved; e.g., the dates of the Flora of British 

 India are rightly given as 1872-97, but the only part of the 

 work referred to — the Indacecs — is dated 1892. The abbreviations 

 are not infrequently misprinted — " Art." (p. 106) and " Crit." 

 (p. 171) should be " Ait.," and " Trans. Hort. Soc. ser. II part iii. 

 p. 115" should be "Trans. Linn. Soc. ser. II. vol. iii." The 

 accidental checking of a reference raises doubt as to how far 

 these are to be trusted; under I. macrosiphon (p. 43) "J. cali- 

 fornica Leichtlin, The Garden, Aug. 14th, 1897 " is cited, but the 

 paragraph referred to is headed I. macrosiphon and the plant, 

 which is figured as well as described, is stated by Purdy (op. 

 cit. 1898, p. 1) to be i". Purclyi, although neither figure nor 

 description is quoted by Mr. Dykes under that species. 



There is evidently ground for criticism in matters of nomencla- 

 ture — for example, if the reductions indicated on p. 196 be accepted, 

 the plant which stands (p. 196) as I. sincljavensis (1884) must 

 take the specific name Aucheri, having been thus described under 

 Xiphion by Baker in 1877. There are inconsistencies of citation — 

 thus X. Aitchisoni stands as the first reference for I. Aitchisoni 

 (p. 198), while X. Stocksii (p. 201) is rightly placed as a synonym; 

 under the former the reference to Baker's Handbook is omitted. 

 I. Biliotti (p. 175) should be Biliotii, and I. palastina appears 

 throughout as palestina. Here and there we find an odd 

 suggestion — e.g., on p. 172, where we read of I. sambucina and 

 I. squalens: "Their history is not at all clear and we may perhaps 

 be permitted to infer that Linnaeus had some doubt as to their 

 claim to specific rank from the fact that he did not include them 

 in his first edition of the Species Plantarum " ! On p. 215 Mr. 

 Dykes points out an extraordinary blunder of Ascherson and 

 Graebner (Syn. Mittel. Eur. Fl. iii. 514) in naming I. juncea 

 " I. imberbis." Poiret named the plant " Iris juncea (nobis) 

 imberbis, foliis junceis," &c, and the German authors have taken 

 the first word of the description as the specific name ! We are 

 not convinced by the reasons given (pp. 145, 146) for dropping 

 I. bi flora L., and it does not appear that Mr. Dykes consulted the 

 specimen in the Linnean Herbarium. I. kumaonensis is cited as 

 published from "Wall. Cat. no. 5052," but this is not a valid 

 publication ; the next reference is to Baker's Handbook (1877) ; 

 but the species was published by D. Don (who wrote the name 

 " kamaonensis ") in Proc. Linn. Soc. i. 8 (1838?) and in Trans. 



