1859] Discovery of Festuca ambigua. 107 



Babington laughingly assured him, " a most safe way of 

 keeping it out of notice"), he at once suspected it ought to 

 rank as a species. But here again the usual difficulty 

 cropped up how to get descriptions of the less-known 

 European species with which to compare it. When he 

 first wrote to Professor Babington about it (in October, 

 1859), ne na d consulted all the Continental books acces- 

 sible to him, including M. Lloyd's " Flore de 1'Ouest de la 

 France " ; and this last-named book had really given him the 

 clue, though it was long before he was able to prove it so; for 

 M. Lloyd had also described (but meagrely) a maritime 

 form of Festuca pseudo myurus, and mentioned as a syno- 

 nym for it " F. ambigua, Le Gall." From Professor Babing- 

 ton' s letter (November i2th, 1859), in which he says, "I 

 have not been able to find the description of F. ambigua, 

 Le Gall," it is evident that this clue, though a slight one, 

 was from the first followed up as far as seemed immediately 

 practicable. But the very name of Le Gall's book the 

 "Flore de Morbihan" was so litle known among either 

 botanists or booksellers that a whole year elapsed before 

 the description was traced. Meanwhile, about the end of 

 January, he adopted the view that the grass was probably 

 that known as Festuca broteri ; and though, by Pro- 

 fessor Babington's judicious advice, he refrained from as 

 yet publishing it so in a scientific journal, he used that 

 name in the " Outlines of Isle of Wight Natural History," 

 which went to press in the first week of May. The spring 

 of this year was a backward one, and it was not till June 

 that he had an opportunity of studying fresh flowering 

 specimens, with the result that on June 25th he wrote to 

 Mr. Newbould (now settled in London) that he was now 

 convinced the plant was not Festuca broteri. Mr. New- 

 bould (June 26th) replied that he had just that morning 

 arrived at the same conclusion, after a careful inspection 

 of the solitary specimen of F. broteri in the Herbarium at 

 Kew. In fact, so far as Mr. Newbould 's most industrious 

 researches in the herbaria went, everything tended to 

 strengthen the idea of a " new species," and even a name, 

 " Festuca helenensis," was under discussion. But still 

 Le Gall had not been found. In July, Mr. Newbould wrote 



