STRUCTUKE AND DEVELOPMENT OF MOSSES AND FERNS. 89 



beginners in the study, who need much help, and would also pro- 

 mote a knowledge of distribution, and prepare the way for a new 

 edition of the London Catalogue of Mosses, now so much required. 

 At least thirty active members would be required to make such a 

 society successful. I have already had ofiers of support from a 

 number of friends, and shall be glad if any persons willing to join 

 such a society will send in their names to me. If I receive sufficient 

 support, I will then communicate with some of our leaders in 

 bryology for their advice and assistance. Failing this, with a 

 smaller number it would still be possible to conduct a club by 

 correspondence, but only for exchange of specimens. — C. H. 

 Waddell, B.D., Saintfield Vicarage, Co. Down. 



Impatiens Noli-me-tangere in Sussex. — Has tlie above plant 

 any claim to be considered truly wild in the South of England? 

 It certainly looks so in a large marsh where a pond once stood, 

 near Felbridge, in East Sussex, where the liev. J. Thovp (of Fel- 

 bridge) found it some years ago, and where last year I saw it 

 flowering abundantly. I do not think cottagers grow it at all in 

 Sussex or Surrey as a flower. — C. E. Salmon. 



NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



The Structure and Development of the Mosses and Ferns [Archegoniatm). 

 By Douglas Houghton Campbell, Ph.D. London and New 

 York : Macmillan & Co. 1895. Pp. viii, 544 ; 26G figs, and 

 2 diagrams. Price 14s. net. 



The archegoniate cryptogams — the Mosses and Ferns — are so 

 important, both in themselves and also in reference to the evolution 

 of the higher plants, and the papers that treat of thera are so 

 numerous, so widely scattered through periodical literature, and so 

 often inaccessible owing to their scarcity or to our ignorance of the 

 language in which they are written, that it has become extremely 

 desirable that all that is known of the morphology of the arche- 

 goniate plants should be collected, sifted, and compacted into the 

 limits of a single volume. The average botanist, who takes an 

 interest in the subject, and feels unsatisfied with the summarised 

 account afforded by text-books, is apt to find the claims made upon 

 his time by his own particular line of work to be too great to per- 

 mit of his indulging in a personal search after original papers. A 

 ready hand of welcome is therefore extended to receive the new 

 book, in which Mr. Campbell, the Professor of Botany at the 

 Stanford University in California, has endeavoured to collect all 

 that is essential for a comparative study of the group. 



The author has not, however, by any means confined himself to 

 a mere compilation from the work of others, but has made it his 

 aim by patient and independent research to place himself as far as 

 possible in such a position that he may be able to narrate the facts 

 at first hand, and to confirm or correct the statements of previous 



