525 



received from Mr. R. B. Bowman, who in turn had received it from 

 — Gibson. Unluckily, I have not preserved also the label which 

 came to my hands along with the specimen, but there are other cir- 

 cumstances which will identify the donor of the specimen to Mr. Bow- 

 man. About the years 1832-4 I received numerous dried plants from 

 the north of England, by the kindness of that accurate botanist, but 

 several of them gathered by other persons. Among those plants were 

 a few, mostly fragmentary and ill-dried specimens, accompanied by 

 labels quite different from the neat labels of Mr. Bowman ; and to 

 these labels the name of " S. Gibson " was subscribed. One of them 

 is now before me, the same that is referred to, on p. 652, in the ' Sup- 

 plement to the New Botanist's Guide ; ' the name of the place cannot 

 be made out on this label, which was evidently written by an unedu- 

 cated person. From recollection I should say that the other labels, 

 on which the name of " S. Gibson " was written, were similar to this 

 one in the quality of paper and character of handwriting; and it is 

 thus quite possible that the writer intended some other locality, which 

 was misread by myself into " Lancaster." If the name of your corre- 

 spondent, Mr. S. Gibson, had been attached to any locality " near 

 Lancaster," for Polypodium Dryopteris, in Mr. Newman's list of Lan- 

 cashire ferns, I should have conjectured some discrepancy of opinion 

 with respect to the specific name, — for, in truth, this one, and two or 

 three other specimens in my herbarium, incline towards P. Dryopte- 

 ris ; but that not being the case, we must suppose either an error as 

 to the locality, or an error on the part of your correspondent in hastily 

 assuming himself to be the person intended. At all events, he will 

 know whether he formerly did send dried plants to Mr. Bowman. 

 The name of "S. Gibson" being the authority for other locaHties of 

 scarce plants, in the New Guide, it would be worth while to ascertain 

 who the person truly is, and what reliance can be placed on his 

 reports of localities for dubiously British plants, — for example 



Geranium nodosum, as having been gathered by him near Halifax. 



Heivett C Watson; Thames Ditto)t, Fehruary 8, 1843. 



268. Enquiry respecting " NymphcBa alba ntinor.'^ In a copy of 

 Blackstone's ' Specimen Botanicum,' which formerly belonged to Pe- 

 ter Collinson, there is the following MS. note pasted in, but not in 

 Collinson's hand-writing. — 



" I don't find the Nyrapbsea alba minor taken notice of in the Synopsis* at folio 

 368. This rare plant I have twice observed. The first was in the North Road from 



* Raii Synopsis, ed. 3tia, 1724. 



