368 NOTES ON SOWK ITBRTPORDSHIBE CARICES. 



(1804) he remarks of C.fulva{v. 3, p. 991), " vulctur spocies a C. 

 fava distinctissima " ; and odds, " very common in Mcamshire. . , 

 Prof. S. Beattie, junr.," to Goodenough's previously recorded station. 

 The two localities are repeated without any addition in his " English 

 Flora" (1828, v. 4., p. 108), where it is said to be " not very un- 

 frequent." and is stated to be " more allied to C. distans and 

 speirostachja than to JIava" and to be undoubtedly very distinct, 

 although confounded with all three species, so that neither the 

 recorded places of growth nor the synonyms can be relied on. In 

 his " English Botany," No. 1295*, published in the same year as, and 

 probably immediately after, the issue of his Latin Flora, Smith has 

 further noticed that " some erroneous specimens led the accurate Dr. 

 Goodenough to reduce this ( C. fulva) to a variety of C. flava, but we 

 have traced the cause of this mistake." I have been unable to 

 learn anything of the authonty for this statement, which would imply 

 yet another change of opinion on the part of the original describer. 

 It is not easy to accept Smith's solution of the difficulty, as his re- 

 marks are in apparent conflict with the earlier as well as the later 

 views of Goodenough, nor is it certain that his own judgment was 

 always consistent with itself. It is difficult to see liow the same 

 species can be "scarcely removed from C. fava," and yet not only 

 " very distinct from it," but " more allied " to C. distam. Xor has 

 an examination of contemporary herbaria served to throw much light 

 on the points in question. 



In the first place, it is remarkable that there should be no British 

 specimens of this controverted Sedge among Sir J. Smith's own plants. 

 A sheet marked ^'Jlava" from Teesdale has at some subsequent 

 period (not by Smith) been placed among the " fidva," with a 

 query ; no doubt, however, can, I think, attach to the correctness of 

 the original name. There are three sheets marked " .ipeiroofacJu/a,^* 

 including the original specimens from David Don ; and one labelled 

 " C. fulva diversissima a flava''^ ; the only British examples, from 

 " Aberdeen, Prof. Beattie, 1799," and " Scotland. Mr. IMackay, 1796 ;" 

 have been altered by Dr. Boottf to speirostachya, an identification in 

 which I have no doubt (if it is necessary to say so) that he was 

 correct ; they are quite indistinguishable from those on the former 

 sheets. Thus C. Ilornsclmchiana {speiroatachi/d) seems to have com- 

 pletely absorbed the reconstituted /w^rrt of Smith, and it must be re- 

 membered that he became acquainted with the former as a native of 

 Britain but a short time before his death. A plant in Pudge's her- 

 barium labelled " C. fulva, a C.flava distinctissima,'' and collected in 

 Anglesea by Dawson Turner, who might have been supposed to have 



* The E. B. figure has usually he<»n quotf d with some degree of hesitation, 

 and it is uncertain whether it was actually drawn from Shropshire pperitneng. 

 It is worth remarking that the roughness of the beak of the perigynium which 

 is 80 conspicuous in the original engraving, and of which Smith has noted oa 

 the drawing itself, " roughness right, very important," has been entirely 

 omitted in the revised plate of Syme. 



t Boott MS. in sched. "The specimens in his (Smith's) herbarium from 

 Beattie, which he quotes under his C. fulvn, have the orifice of the perigynium 

 distinctly membranous." — Boott, Illustr., pt. iv., p. 138. 



