376 NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
(Journ. Bot. v. pp. 217-219) in great measure hold good with refer- 
ence to the present list. It is, indeed, very difficult to see what pur- 
pose is served by the numbers in the ‘Compendium.’ 
Each species is treated in accordance with a fixed formula, to the 
explanation of which pages 62-78 of the introductory portion are 
evoted. It consists of seven lines, the first four of which relate to 
the distribution of the plant in Great Britain, and the remaining three 
to that throughout Europe and other extratropical parts of the northern 
hemisphere. "The “census” at the beginning of the fourth line giving 
the number of provinces, subprovinces, and counties (including vice- 
counties), in which the plant has been satisfactorily determined to be 
a native, must give a very just estimate of the real frequency of each 
species. It, is followed by a “census” for Ireland, founded on the 
recently-published ‘Cybele Hibernica? of Messrs. Moore and More. 
The exotic distribution does not, says the author, pretend to be com- 
plete; from various causes such completeness is almost impossible. 
We may, however, feel sure that in this, as in most work of Mr. Wat- 
son, the sins are chiefly those of omission, and the errors are few; in 
any case, it is far more complete than ayes else of the sort in 
existence. 
In this immense collection of recorded facts there is nothing that 
calls for special critical notice, but we cannot allow a remark on 
page 60 to pass without a protest. Mr. Watson says,—‘ Our truly 
reliable records scarcely extend back one century. Really careful ob- 
servations and reasonings on the nativity of species can scarcely be 
dated back half a century." He proceeds to say that, “even at the 
present day, the records made by a large number of the locality-re- 
porters are too often unreliable” from various causes. To the latter 
statement we must give a regretful acquiescence, though we believe 
that greater accuracy now exists than was the case twenty or thirty 
years back, an improvement due in great measure to Mr. Watson’s 
writings. But, as to the former quotation, every botanist who has really 
worked at the old books and herbaria,—and with them we fear Mr. 
Watson can scarcely be reckoned,—will give it an emphatic contradiction. 
No modern botanist’s records are more “ truly reliable” than those of 
Ray, Dale, Doody, Buddle, and others in the seventeenth century, and 
those of l, Johnson, and Parkinson in the sixteenth are probably 
equally so, though less easily verified. The errors with which these 
