140 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



it was altogether too late to effect anything. The vessel actually 

 passed Helsingborg on the 5th October, and was already out of 

 Swedish waters and on the high seas when the official document 

 was drawn up. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 



LII. — Jacquin's ' Select arum Stirpium Historia Iconibus 



Pictis.' 



fematists are indebted to Nicolaus Joseph Jacquin 

 (1727-1817) for many fine phytographical works, of which the 

 subject of the present note is an admirable example. This 

 work embodies the botanical results of a four years' stay in 

 the West Indies and the adjacent mainland from 1755 to 1759, 

 and gives us a very fair idea of Jacquin's merit as a botanist, and 

 of his ability as an artist. It had been preceded in 1760 by a 

 brief enumeration of the plants collected by himself and his 

 assistants, and in 1763 by the first edition of the Stirpium 

 Historia, containing ample descriptions of the plants, and 

 illustrated by 183 rather crude copper-plates after his own 

 original drawings ; this is a small folio, published at Vienna, 

 and is comparatively common ; copies are readily obtainable 

 for about 30s. 



The imperial folio edition with coloured plates is extremely 

 rare: a copy was sold in England a few years ago for £225 

 (Junk, Bibl. Bot. no. 963, 1909). The number of copies of 

 this edition, which was issued at Vienna about 1780, is given 

 by Pritzel {Thesaurus, ed. 2, no. 4363) as eighteen, but this is 

 at variance with the record left us by Ebert whose entry is 

 worth quoting here. He writes : " It is asserted that not more 

 than twelve copies exist (consult Bibl. Firmiana, T. 3, P. II., 

 p. 61; Esprit des joiirn,, Janv., 1782; Cobres Ratal. II,, 590; 

 Catal. Bibl, Banks. III., 188), and the copy in the Royal Library 

 at Dresden was bought in 1818 for 500 dollars. Besides this 

 edition, a MS. list of Jacquin's writings drawn up by the book- 

 seller Artaria, which I have before me, also mentions Ejusdem 

 opcris cditio picta with 264 tables painted by the hand, of which 

 only twenty-five copies exist " (Bibl. Diet, ii., 833, 1837). 



London possesses three copies of this work, others are at 

 Vienna and Gottingen, in the Royal Libraries at Berlin and 

 Dresden, the Library of Congress at Washington, and in the 

 New York Botanical Garden ; an account of the acquisition 

 of the last of these is given by Mr. J. H. Barnhart in the 

 Journal of that institution for 1912 (p. 99). We are thus able 

 to locate nine of the copies issued. Of those in London two 

 are at the British Museum at Bloomsbury, in the Banksian 

 and King's Libraries respectively; the other is in the Department 

 of Botany at South Kensington. From the botanist's point of 

 view these are identical ; but the bibliographer observes several 

 differences: the matter is the same in each, but the "make 

 up " is different 



