378 NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
has been ably conducted, and has proved a very useful source of in- 
formation to, and medium of intercommunication among cryptogamic 
botanists, and it is yearly becoming more useful and important. 
Years before the * Hedwigia" was established, its editor had been 
engaged in a not less important work for the same class of students— 
the publication of specimens of European cellular eryptogams. By 
the help of a large number of correspondents scattered over Europe, 
some of whom are well-known British naturalists, he has succeeded in 
supplying the herbaria of his subscribers with carefully named speci- 
mens of a very large proportion of the cryptogamic plants of Europe. 
It must be evident to those consulting these valuable publications that 
while Dr. Rabenhorst performed his work as editor with great care in 
reference to all the Orders, he is specially interested in the dige. 
And as the result of this devotion we have the Flora, the title of which 
is prefixed to this notice, just completed. In this work he brings 
together all the experience and observations which these labours, in 
which he has for so many years been engaged, has supplied. The 
result is a valuable critical exposition of the fresh and brackish water 
Alga, which must be in the hands of every student of this Order of 
plants. As algologists too frequently confine their attention to the 
marine species, this work is all the more important. It fills a deside- 
ratum in the flora of Britain, as it does in that of Europe. Since 
Hassall published his ‘ Freshwater Algze,’ nothing has appeared in this 
country dealing systematically with these plants. That work is now 
not only out of print, but also quite out of date. Dr. Rabenhorst in- 
troduces in this, as he had already done in his * Cryptogamic Flora of 
Saxony,’ a woodcut of each genus, which will prove of great assistance 
to the student in appreciating readily the characters on which the 
genera are founded. 
Monographie der Gattung Silene. By Dr. P. Rohrbach. Pp. 249. 
With Two Plates of Seeds. Leipzig: 1868. 
This is an admirable and exhaustive monograph of the genus Silene. 
An introduction of sixty-one pages is devoted to the morphological 
and structural description of the genus, and to an exposition of its 
position in the Natural Order. The following is the author's synopsis 
of the genera of Lychnidew, as far as regards the representatives of the 
tribe in the * British Flora’ :— 
