SHORT NOTES 141 



The title-page and plates are drawn and coloured by hand. 

 The wording of the title is: "Nicolai Josephi Jacquin, Selectarum 

 stirpiurn Americanarum historia, in qua ad Linnseanum systema 

 determinates descriptaeque sistuntur plantae illae, quas in insulis 

 Martinica, Jamaica, Domingo aliisque, et in vicinaa continentis 

 parte observavit rariores ; adjectis iconibus ad autoris archetypa 

 pictis." The border round this is similar in the Bloomsbury 

 copies, but differs from that in the copy at South Kensington, 

 which is from a much finer design. The Banksian copy has 

 a half-title, and at the end of the text a "Prospectus stirpiurn 

 contentarum " of two pages, which do not appear in the others. 

 The text is also in larger type and occupies 137 pages, with an 

 "Explicatio Tabularum " of three pages; in the other copies, 

 the typographical differences between which are mainly due to 

 resetting, the collation is pp. 136, iv. The Berlin copy agrees 

 with the Banksian in this respect (see Urban, Symbolce Antillancs, 

 i. 77). The nomenclature of the first edition is revised, and 

 Linnaeus's Systema Vegetabilium ed. 13, 1774, is cited through- 

 out. The 264 plates are copied from originals by Jacquin, and 

 are of equal merit in the three copies examined ; up to 258 each 

 plate is devoted to one plant, the remainder have fragmentary 

 figures of nearly a hundred different species. They are from 

 the original drawings which were used in the preparation of the 

 copper-plate illustrations of the first edition, in which, however, 

 many of these plates do not appear. Eeduced to octavo size, 

 they were issued at Nuremberg in 1785 ?-1789 under the title 

 Dreyhundert auserlesene Amerikanische Geivachse, a most in- 

 different production. Several of the plates are omitted, others 

 are added from J. S. Mueller's Illustr. Syst. Sex. (1775-77), and 

 Trew's PL Select. (1750-77); t. 69 = P. Miller's Fig. PI. Garcl. 

 Diet. t. 180, and t. 94 is from Jacquin's Misc. i. t. 4. The text 

 was re-issued in octavo size at Mannheim in 1788, and can be 

 bought for a few shillings. 



F. G. WlLTSHEAR. 



SHOBT NOTES. 



Two Alchemillas. — 1. Last summer I collected a series of 

 Alchemilla vulgaris forms in Scotland, and when sending them to 

 Dr. H. Lindberg, of Helsingfors, for confirmation of the names, 

 Mr. G. C. Druce allowed me to include an example of " A. acuti- 

 dens " from Ben Lawers, collected by Dr. Ostenfeld (see Journ. 

 Bot. 1912, 201). The example has been returned, labelled "A. 

 alpestris Schm., specim. autumnale ! " by Dr. Lindberg, who tells 

 me that Dr. Ostenfeld has also sent him two further examples 

 which are exactly the same thing. Unless the specimens of 

 A. acutidens from other British localities (Journ. Bot. I. c.) prove 

 to be different from the Ben Lawers plant, the name must for the 

 present be withdrawn from our lists. 



2. During 1912 Alchemilla vulgaris was reported to me from 



