326 THE FLORA OF THE ALPS. 



not want the complete Flora of Switzerland which Messrs. Nimmo, 

 in the title of their book, profess to supply ; and the botanist will 

 hardly find it. A clavis to the species, such as that given by 

 Gremli, renders a lengthened description unnecessary, but Mr. 

 Bennett gives us no help of this kind, and his diagnoses seem to us 

 in many cases insufficient. 



A brief examination of one genus — Cerastium — will show how 

 Mr. Bennett has treated his subject: — 



" The following English lowland species of Mouse-ear Chick- 

 weed are found also in Switzerland : — (J. glomeratum, Fr. ; semi- 

 decandrwn, L. ; trivialc, Lk. ; anwnse, L. ; viih/atum, L. ; viscosiiiii, 

 L. C. brachycarpum, Schm., and sufruticosiim, L., are probably 

 mountain forms of arcense ; and C. jnacrocarpum, Sch., oi vuhjdtum.. 

 C. hrachypctalum, Pers., is very nearly allied to (jlomcratnm. C. 

 f/lutinosum, L., covered with a glutinous down, is a Southern low- 

 land species." 



Here the four names glomeratum, triviale, vulgatum, and viscosum 

 stand for as many plants, but it is certain that they only represent 

 two of our English species: glomeratum "Fr." should be assigned 

 to Thuillier and for " brachycarpum Schm. " we must read " Schur " : 

 no glutinosum is assigned to Linnaeus in Mr. Jackson's Index. 

 Among the " more or less alpine " species, of which a descriptive 

 enumeration follows, we find " C. lanatum. Koch," by which 

 C. lanatum Lam. is probably meant. Mr. Bennett rightly says 

 that " the specific characters are often very difficult to determine; " 

 but he has not succeeded in contrasting these in a helpful manner. 

 If, for instance, we put side by side the characters given for 

 C. alpinum and C latifoUum, we shall find that they are not 

 mutually exclusive; the characters assigned to the one are so com- 

 patible with those of the other, that all might apply to the same 

 plant. 



" C. alpinum, L. " C. latifuliwn, L. 



" Usually more or less glan- "Leaves ovate-elliptical, stiff, 



dular-hairy, stem 1-5-flowered, brittle, flowers large, few, petals 



with rosettes of leaves, flower- more than twice as long as se- 



stalk oblique after flowering, pals, deeply bifid, capsule nearly 



sepals obtuse, with a membra- globose ; high ; Switzerland, 



nous margin ; high altitudes ; Dauphiny." 

 frequent." 



"We are sorry that we cannot endorse the favourable opinion of 

 a reviewer in the Daily Chronicle. " The descriptions," says this 

 authority, " are, it is true, of a technical character ; but is there a 

 tourist who has not heard of the petals and sepals and even [!] of 

 the anthers ? Armed with this amount of knowledge, there will be 

 no great difficulty in running to earth a given plant." If this 

 writer were shut up in a room with Mr. Bennett's book and a 

 dozen "given plants," we think he would soon alter his opinion ; 

 it would be as reasonable to say that a man would be able to read 

 an Arabic work because he had learned the English alphabet. The 

 Spectator considers the plates " in most cases exceedingly faithfully 



