BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 96 



durinj;^ 1886-1890, and one appeared in July, 1891. Then came a 

 period of tlii-ee years during which nothing was published, but 

 an instalment of sixty pages was issued in June 1894, since 

 which a year and a half has gone by without further publication. 

 We hope the Linnean Society will press forward this important 

 undertaking, the incompleteness of which is a great drawback to 

 its usefulness. 



The Proceeiliniia of the Somersetshire ArchfBological and Natural 

 History Society for 1895 is mainly occupied by the third and con- 

 cluding part of the Eev. R. P. Murray's Flora of Somersetshire, 

 extending from Solanacea to Characeie, with an appendix. The 

 introduction and title, completing the work, will be sent out with 

 the Proceedings for the present year, and we trust the copies of the 

 Flora will be issued separately, as the usefulness of Mr. Murray's 

 work will otherwise be considerably lessened. We reserve a more 

 detailed account of what appears to be an important addition to our 

 list of local floras, in the hope that we may later obtain a copy of 

 the completed work. 



Mrs. Babington is preparing for publication a 'Life' of the late 

 Prof. Babington, and will be grateful for the loan of letters written 

 by him, which will be promptly returned. Her address is — Brook- 

 side, Cambridge. 



Dr. Trimen will leave England for Ceylon about the middle of 

 the present month. 



In the Annnls of Scottish Natural Historij for January, Mr. Druce 

 subjects the ninth edition of the London Catalogue to exceedingly 

 minute criticism. Some of his suggestions are worthy of con- 

 sideration ; others (such as the resuscitation of ignored genera) 

 are of doubtful utility ; while the publication in a review of this 

 kind of numerous new binominals is not in accordance with the 

 practice of the best authorities, who properly leave the manufacture 

 of such combinations to the monographer, whose work on a genus 

 entitles him to add his name to them. The usefulness of Mr. 

 Druce's paper is marred by the presence of numerous misprints of 

 various kinds — a casual glance through it detects such oddities as 

 " Zannichellia arvensis " ; such misspellings as '' rotboellioides," 

 " anagalladifolium," and " Sueda " ; such authorities as " Alhone " 

 (twice) and " Alphonso de Candolle " ; and such citations as 

 " Adans. Fam. p. 16" for "Adans. Fam. ii. 164." Mr. Druce is 

 not always happy in his corrections of the London Catalogiie : he 

 takes exception to Fpilohiiun alsincfolium, and says, " Villars wrote 

 alsini folium." We have not seen Villars' Prospectus : but in Hist. 

 PL Dauph. iii. 511, he writes ^' Epilobium alsinefolium. Prosp. 45." 



The Pharmaceutical Society has issued an excellently printed 

 Museum. Beport, containing a descriptive list of the donations made 

 during 1893-4. We note that the natural orders all terminate in 

 acecB; this " deviation from custom has been made Avith the view of 

 rendering the meaning of the names more easily understood bv 

 students" — an admirable aim which it seems to us is^'hardly 



