491 



SHORT NOTES. 



BoTRYCHiUM AUSTRALE Br. — 111 the Bulletin of the Torrty Club for 

 October (p. 532), Prof. L. M. Underwood quotes the description of 

 this plant from Brown's Prodromus, and adds: "This brief de- 

 scription is utterly unsatisfactory, and, were it not for Robert 

 Brown's plant at the Kew Herbarium together with several other 

 plants from the type locality or from other portions of the Australian 

 region, we might very easily unite this species with almost any 

 of the others." Further on he speaks of the Kew plant as "Brown's 

 type." I had imagined it was sufficiently known that the types of 

 Brown's Prodromus, named and numbered by himself in accordance 

 with that work, were in the National Herbarium, whence duplicates 

 were sent to Kew and Edinburgh when Brown's collections were 

 distributed (see Journ. Bot. 1876, 192). In one of the actual types 

 of B. australe the sterile lamina is much larger than in the Kew 

 specimen, being 13 cm. high and 9 broad : the locality of these is 

 given by Brown on the accompanying ticket as " Parramatta, Port 

 Jackson." We have two other sheets, authenticated by Brown, of 

 specimens sent from Paramatta by Caley in 1803 ; in his MSS. the 

 plant is localized — " Campi graminosi or?e orientalis Nov^ Hol- 

 landise, in viciuitate Portus Jackson, Parramatta, &c., et ad liuvium 

 Derwent." — James Britten. 



Notes on Cambridgeshire Plants (p. 246). — My object in com- 

 piling the tables of Cambridgeshire extinctions (pp. 247-8) was to 

 give a complete list of those plants which have undoubtedly occurred 

 in the county, but which are now, so far as is known, no longer to 

 be found therein. The first table comprised forty-nine species. 

 With the probable exceptions of Sisynibriuin Irio, Mentha rotundi- 

 folia, and Setaria viridis, and possibly that of Hieracium murorum, 

 these have, on excellent authority, at some time occurred as wild 

 plants in the county. Some few, notably Latlnjrus Nissolia (which 

 Mr. Fryer has found near the boundary at Pidley), Carex teretius- 

 cula, and Centunculus minimus, may be rediscovered ; but at least 

 forty are permanently lost. The paragraph which followed dealt 

 with such Gamlingay plants as were not, like Malaxis and Rhyncho- 

 spora alba (which occurred only in the wettest parts), quite extinct 

 in 1860. Several even of these are not now to be found there. The 

 fact that they occurred nowhere else in the county does not render 

 their extinction therein any the less a matter for concern. In the 

 last table I enumerated twenty-seven species for which there are no 

 recent records. It is quite possible that more than half of these do 

 still occur, but having searched carefully but unsuccessfully for 

 some of them, I think it open to doubt. The localities in which 

 Antennaria dioica, Hypochceris glabra, Botrychium Lunaria, Her- 

 minium Monorchis, &c., have occurred (and may still occur) have 

 undergone considerable alteration of late years. Lastrcea spinulosa, 

 Ayera Spica-Venti, Creyis foetida, Glyceria distaiis, and two or three 

 others will very likely be found again. Altogether, however, it is 

 morally certain that fifty-five, and most probable that sixty-five, 

 plants formerly indigenous in Cambridgeshire are now extinct therein . 



