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Note on Rubus nitidus of the ' Rubi GermaniciJ and on some Speci- 

 mens so named in the Smithian Herbarium. By Edwin Lees, 

 Esq., F.L.S. 



In my last communication there are two errors (one at least attach- 

 able to the compositor), which it will be best to correctforthwith, espe- 

 cially as I thus unintentionally, as the context shows, misrepresent 

 my accurately-observant friend the Rev. Andrew Bloxam. It is 

 stated at p. 363 that Mr. Bloxam had informed me that Mr. Babing- 

 ton's plicatus was identical with my leucostachys, the fact being, as 

 shown by the very title of the paper, that it was Mr. Babington's ni- 

 tidus to which Mr. Bloxam's information had reference. The other 

 misprint, at p. 360, is " caule folii fere glabro," as if Weihe & Nees 

 had stated the stem of nitidus to be almost smooth instead of quite 

 so, without any qualification, the words being, " caule foliifero gla- j 

 bro," — the leafy or barren stem entirely smooth. 



Being thus obliged to take up my pen, it may not be amiss to im- 

 prove the opportunity by a few remarks on the specimens named 

 nitidus in the Smithian herbarium, which will be a supplementary aid 

 to my former observations, and at all events show what Sir J. E. 

 Smith truly meant by his designations R. nitidus and R. affinis in the 

 ' English Flora.' When an eminent botanist, like Mr. Woods, says 

 in a former number of the ' Phytologist,' that he never ventures to 

 offer an opinion on a bramble, one ought, perhaps, to feel a little dif- 

 fidence when pronouncing a decision on dried specimens of Rubi ; 

 but an experience of more than a dozen years among thorny thickets 

 enables me to recognize the physiognomy of my old lacerators, and 

 so fearlessly (if I may be pardoned the vulgarism) come up to the 

 scratch. I have been often asked what there could be worthy of at- 

 tention in a common blackberry or thorny briar ? But I can truly say 

 in reply, that from the stony woods of the Cotswolds, where the ruby 

 fruit of R. saxatilis adorns the broken oolite, to the deep glens of 

 Devon, where the roaring Lyn is shaded by almost ever-verdant, 

 drooping shrubs of R. suberectus ; nay, on to the sandy dunes of the 

 shores of North Wales, where the dewberry spreads its bloomy drupes 

 among a matted mass of creeping stems ; or with flowering raspberry 

 bushes in the odorous and balmy woods of May ; to say little of the 

 sable clusters beautifying the hedges of autumn on woodland height 

 or in sequestered dingle ; I have found abundant food for enjoyment, 

 reflection and observation. It is true that I have occasionally re- 



