236 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



found by me there in 1889, again in 1897, and now in 1911. In 

 each case the ditches or pond- had been cleared from other 

 vegetation in the autumn. — G. Claridge Druce. 



REVIEWS. 



A Dictionary of Plant-Names. By H. L. Gerth van Wijk; 

 Teacher at the Hoogere Burger-school and at the Gymnasium 

 at Middelburg, Prov. Zealand, the Netherlands. Published 

 by the Dutch Society of Sciences. 2 vols, large 4to, pp. xxiv, 

 1444. Haarlem, 1909, 1910. 

 In these two handsome volumes we have the first part of an 

 undertaking which has already involved much time — the editor 

 began to compile it "about twenty-five" (now twenty-seven) years 

 ago — and labour, and which, before the second part is completed, 

 will need an equal expenditure of trouble, and probably even 

 greater expense. Its object is to bring together the names by 

 which a given plant is known in English, French, German, and 

 Dutch ; in the two volumes before us all are alphabetically 

 arranged under the Latin names ; in the two yet to be produced, 

 the popular names will form the index, each followed by its Latin 

 equivalent, thus reversing the arrangement adopted in Messrs. 

 Britten & Holland's Dictionary of English Plant-Names. Besides 

 the names of the plants themselves, the Dictionary includes the 

 parts "now or formally (sic) used in medecine " (sic) — the editor 

 would have done well to ask some Enghsh friend to read his proofs — 

 and names which, " without being used by the people at large, are 

 frequently met with in books : the editor, however, has not in- 

 serted all the book-names found by him," and in this we think he 

 is wise: the ridiculously miscalled "English names" which dis- 

 figure so many popular books are thus for the most part excluded. 

 Even as it is, however, mere translations are far too numerous. 



The popular plant-nomenclature for the four nati6ns specified 

 is very extensive — such lists are practically never complete. The 

 English vernacular names are for the most part taken ^bodily from 

 the Dictionary already mentioned ; those for France are apparently 

 similarly transferred from M. Eolland's Flore Pojmlaire. It 

 would, we think, have been only right to state this in the preface; 

 as it is, the Dictionary of English names appears at first sight to 

 be omitted even from the " list of works mentioned by the editor" ; 

 it is only on looking this through that we find the work entered 

 under the abbreviation " Epln." This bibliographical Hst is the most 

 unsatisfactory feature of the book, as the authors' names, in very 

 many cases besides the above, do not appear except after the abbre- 

 viation, which are moreover often anything but suggestive, e. g. : 

 " H. gram. : H. C. van Hall, Specimen botanicum, exhibens 

 sinopsin graminum indigenarum." 

 It is hardly too much to say that the bibliography, which should 

 be one of the most useful features of a book of this kind, is in the 

 work before us practically useless. 



