120 Bibliographical Notices. 



cently recorded as a British plant, and supposed to have heen first 

 noticed by Messrs. Ball and Babington on the Gogmagog Hills, in 

 Cambridgeshire. He states that the original drawing published in 

 ' English Botany' as C.prcecox, and made by the late James Sowerby, 

 represented C. ericetorum, but that " Smith saw that the glumes 

 were not those of C. prcecox, and the details were in consequence 

 altered." Thus the plant was found by some botanist at least as 

 long since as the year 1802; but, unfortunately, the locality is not 

 recorded. His researches have shown that, unfortunately, such 

 alterations of the original drawings were not unfrequently made by 

 Smith, and that thus many of the difficulties have arisen which we 

 now meet with when endeavouring to identify plants with the other- 

 wise valuable plates in ' English Botany.' 



Some interesting papers appear in the Appendix. First, a table 

 showing the dates of the earliest and latest notice of many plants in 

 Essex. Some few of these are as early as the sixteenth, and a good 

 many occur in the seventeenth century. Next we have a table of 

 the comparative abundance of each plant. They are arranged as 

 "common," "rather local," and "very local." No. 3 is a com- 

 parison of the floras of Essex, Cambridge, Hertford, and Kent. 

 No. 4 relates to the arrangement of the plants of Great Britain 

 according to their comparative frequency, as given in Watson's 

 ' Cybele Britannica,' vol. iv. No. 5 gives a short list of plants not 

 unlikely to be found in Essex. No. 6 includes biographical sketches 

 of the celebrated John Ray, who commenced and ended his life in 

 Essex ; of Samuel Dale, Richard Warner, and the recently lost and 

 justly lamented Edw. Forster. 



It will be seen by what we have said, that this is a work quite up 

 to the requirements of the present time, highly creditable to its 

 author, and well deserving of the attention of English botanists ; and 

 it is probably unnecessary to add that it does not contain descriptions 

 of the plants, but that the general floras of Britain are referred to 

 for information of that kind, as is now the usual and laudable custom 

 of writers on local botany. 



A Manual of European Butterflies. By W. F. Kirby. 



Williams & Norgate. 18 6' 2. 



A descriptive Manual of the Butterflies of Europe has long been 

 a desideratum with those of our travellers who, not caring to make 

 a close study of entomology, still take some interest in the more 

 conspicuous objects of natural history. Of these objects none are 

 more striking or beautiful than the numerous butterflies which, in 

 our Continental rambles, at once attract notice, whether they rise 

 from the rushes on the steep mountain-side, or on the sultry plain 

 flit lazily from flower to flower, a "joy for ever" to all whose hearts 

 sympathize with nature. 



Mr. Kirby offers us descriptions of 321 species of Rhopalocera : 

 these descriptions are partly original, partly compiled or condensed 

 from the best foreign authorities. We may here be permitted to 



