BOOK-XOTES, XEWS, ETC. 281 



several successive years on a large area of the plant in the peat-moors 

 of Somerset. In the same number Mr. H. S. Thompson calls attention 

 to the similarity of the radical leaves of Valeriana dioica and I^ar- 

 nassia jjalustris. 



• 

 Mr. a. H. Eyans prints in the Hisforij of tlie Berwicl^sliire 

 Naturalists'' Club (xxiii. 217-235) some notes on plants found in the 

 district worked by the Club : the notes are supplementary to the list 

 of less common plants of the same area printed by Mr. Adam Anderson 

 in the preceding volume (xxii. 227 aeciq.), and \ire largely based on 

 the writer's own observations. 



Messes. Routledge have published (Is. Gd. net) a curious little 

 book on T/ie Wild Foods of Great Britain, "where to find them and 

 how to cook them," by L. C. R. Cameron. Of this about half is 

 devoted to the vegetable kingdom, beginning witli "Wild Vegetables, 

 Herbs, and Salad- Plants," and passing through "Edible Flowers and 

 Wild Fruits " to " Esculent Seaweeds " and "Edible Funguses." The 

 first on the list is Fapaver Rhaeas, of which " the young leaves from 

 plants that have not fiowered should be gathered during harvest-time," 

 and are used for making salads " or " may be cooked like spinach :" 

 even those who have noted the very various contents of an Italian 

 salad would, we think, be surprised to find poppy-leaves among them. 

 Among " Edible Flowers " the Lime holds the first place : the Fungi 

 are treated at considerable length. There are numerous illustrations, 

 mostly poor reproductions of well-known figures. " Over thirty years' 

 experimental experience " — manifestly the best kind of exj^erience — • 

 " enables [the author] to recommend with confidence all the recipes 

 included in this book," some of which, he tells us, echoing the White 

 Knight, " are of my own invention." The book is " cordially recom- 

 mended " (by the author) " to the very poor, chiefly men of letters 

 and disabled oflicers discharged without pension or gratuity — a large 

 and growing class — in the hope that by its means they may be enabled 

 to i^rovide themselves with good and palatable food that might other- 

 wise prove beyond their reach." 



It will 1)6 remembered that Mr. E. C. Horrell's Furopean Spliag- 

 7iace(je was published as a Supplement to this Journal in 19U1 and 

 contained descrij^tions of all the species varieties recognised at that 

 time as European. The diagnoses were translated and adapted from 

 Warnstorf's publications in FLedwicjia and elsewhere. In 1911 

 W^arnstorf published his weighty and definitive monograph, the 

 Sphagnologia Universalis, the outcome of his life's work on the 

 Sphagnaceae of the whole world : but the price of that work and the 

 German text have made it inaccessible to most British moss-students. 

 We are now indebted to Mr. J. A. AVheldon for a Synop)sis of the 

 Furopean Sphagna (Darwen : W. H. Western, June 1917, 42 pp., 

 price 2.S. 6<:/.), which is compiled from W^arnstorf's Sphagnolocjia and 

 indicates the species varieties and forms that occur and are likely to 

 occur in the British Isles, giving brief diagnoses of all such as were 

 not described in Mr. Horrell's work. Fifty-nine species and innumer- 

 able varieties and forms are included, as against Mr. Horrell's fiftv 



