SHORT NOTES 339 



Andeosace ciliata in the Alps : a Correction. — I sent to 

 my friend M. G. Beauverd, keeper of the Herbier Boissier, a 

 specimen of the Androsace from the Grands Mulets which 

 originally I had named A. glacialis Hoppe (= alpina Lam.), but 

 which recently I had determined as A. ciliata (see p. Ill) — a 

 determination confirmed by Mr. Bucknall. M. Beauverd informs 

 me that Dr. Buser and he consider my plant x Androsace 

 Ehneri = x A. aretioides Kerner = A. aJjjina x obtusifolia 

 E. Knuth in Pax ex Knuth, Pilanzenreich 22, Primulacece, p. 219 

 (1905). He adds that this hybrid, which I do not find in any 

 book I possess, has long been know^n and is widely spread in 

 the Pennine Alps ; and that he himself has gathered fine examples 

 from the Col de Fenetre and this year from the Gornergrat. 



H. S. Thompson. 



Folk-lore op the Tormentil. — The following is taken from 

 the note on "The Folk-lore of London," issued in connection 

 with the special exhibition of medical charms, etc., collected 

 in London, now on view at the V/ellcome Historical Medical 

 Museum, 54a, Wigmore Street, W. Acorns also figure in the 

 collection, both singly and in necklace form, being worn — no doubt 

 on account of their astringent properties — as a remedy against 

 diarrhoea. Mr. Edward Lovett, who has lent the collection, was 

 told by a herbalist that " two girls came to his shop and asked 

 whether he could let them have a pennyworth of Tormentilla root. 

 He gave it to them, but they would not tell him why they wanted 

 it. After about a week they returned for some more. He would 

 not let them have it till they had told him wdiat they w^ere going 

 to do with it, and finally they confessed that the ' young man ' 

 of one of them had ceased to be a lover, and, acting on the 

 advice of a ' wise woman,' they were going to burn the root on 

 a Friday midnight, in order to make the lover so miserable that 

 he would return to the love he had forsaken." 



BE VIEWS. 



The Genus Phoradcndron : a Monographic Bevision. By 

 William Trelease, Professor of Botany in the University 

 of Illinois. Urbana, Illinois : Published by the University, 

 1916. 4to, cloth, pp. 224, 245 plates. Price not stated. 



In this weighty volume — w^e employ the adjective in its literal 

 sense, for the book scales nearly five pounds — we have the result 

 of many years' labour on the part of Professor Trelease, who 

 in the course of its preparation has visited all the great herbaria 

 of Europe, and has thus been able to bring to completion a 

 monograph which he had already undertaken so far as the 

 North American species of Phoradendron were concerned. The 

 importance of the volume may be estimated from the fact that 

 the author found, " when casting [his] results into classified 



