398 



ceived an unkind cut or rough detainer from a surly, straggling bram- 

 ble on whose toe I have trodden, but there is a moral lurking even 

 here ; for friends are occasionally snappish as briars, and it saves fur- 

 ther laceration to unhook quietly ! But to come out of this thicket 

 of digression, and return to the Rubi in the Linn. Soc. Museum. 



There are several specimens in the Smithian herbarium named R. 

 nitidus, which I shall remark upon in order, but Smith himself in the 

 ' English Flora ' refers only to three, upon which he founds his de- 

 scription ; one from Snelsmore Common, near Newbury, Berks, sent 

 by Mr. Bicheno ; another from St. Leonard's Forest, Sussex, from 

 Mr. Borrer ; and a third from Shropshire, communicated by the Rev. 

 E. Williams. One error of necessity begets another, and Sir J. E. 

 Smith, as I have shown in my last paper on R. leucostachys, having 

 mistaken R. plicatus of W. & N. (misled, probably, by the deceptive 

 name), certainly includes under his nitidus decided specimens of R. 

 plicatus, Rub. Germ. Thus Williams's specimen, ticketed " No. 7, 

 from Shropshire," is the plant now described as plicatus by Mr. Ba- 

 bington, and no doubt belonging to that species. The brambles 

 from Snelsmore and St. Leonard's Forest seem to be not precisely the 

 same as the Shropshire plant, but rather small specimens of sube- 

 rectus, though really not very far removed from the described nitidus 

 of Esenbeck. Mr. Bicheno had provisionally named them ericeto- 

 rum, which name still remains in some collections, but Welsh speci- 

 mens of suberectus are almost exactly similar. 



What appears to me to be the true R. nitidus of Rub. Germ., with 

 bright redjlowers, and quite agreeing in its smooth stem and sube- 

 rect habit with the German plant, I have found in Devonshire, and if 

 I am correct in this, the German nitidus is, as Esenbeck declares it, 

 a variety of R. plicatus. In fact, after much thought and incessant 

 examination, I incline to agree with the late Mr. Bicheno,* whose 

 judgment was pretty clear on the subject, that R. suberectus, fissus, 

 plicatus, fastigiatus and nitidus ( W. fy N.), are really only forms of 

 one variable, but decidedly suberect and non-rooting species. The 

 specimens, then, named by Smith nitidus, are referrible to plicatus 

 and suberectus, and it is only these that Professor Lindley could have 

 had in view in the first edition of his Synopsis, where he describes R. 

 nitidus on the " authority of Smith's English Flora." Yet in the se- 

 cond edition, probably from a reconsideration of the specimens, he 

 refers Smith's nitidus to affinis, which, though wrong as to the name, 



* See a letter from that botanist to Sir J. E. Smith, preserved with the Rubi in 

 the Smithian herbarium. 



