1858.] RETROSPECTIVE CRITICISM. 379 



rightly informed upon the subject, I hasten to acquaint him and 

 your readers generally, that the plant in question had been ob- 

 served and recorded in the co. Caernarvon more than sixty years 

 ago, I have now before me ^Letters written during a Tour 

 through North Wales in the year 1798, etc., by the Rev. J. Evans, 

 B.A., Oxon.^ (mine is the third edition, 1804), and at page 193 

 we find that the author, after quoting the remarks of a friend of 

 his, describing some parts of the Snowdon district, adds : — 



'* This gentleman also favoured us with a list of rare plants 

 growing about the different parts of the mountain : Anthe7'icum 

 serotinum, Serratula alpina, Cerastium alpinum, C. latifolium, 

 Saxifraga stellaris, S. nivalis, Lychnis alpina, Polypodium il- . , 

 vense, P. alpinum, Acrostichum septentrionale, Viola alpina (what- 

 ever that may be ! !), Geum rivale, and Dryas octopetala,^' etc. 



This of Evans* led me to look a little further, and in Nichol- 

 son^s ' Cambrian Traveller's Guide,' a very useful though rather 

 confused, and in places most perplexingly erroneous, compilation, 

 there occurs, under the description of Llanberis, the following 

 passage, but the compiler does not inform us from whom he 

 borrowed it, probably from Evans, however, as above quoted : — 



" On Clogwyn j Garnedd are the following plants : — Antheri- 

 cum serotinum, Serratula alpina, Cerastium alpinum, Viola al- 

 pina, Dryas octopetala," etc. 



It certainly does not occur in Bingley, nor, so far as I can find, 

 in any other of the North Wales Tours, and it is quite evident 

 that our highest authority, Mr. Hewit Cotterell Watson, ignores 

 it as a Welsh plant altogether : neither do we find it as such, in 

 the several editions of Babiugton or Hooker and Arnott ; but it 

 is still kept as an open question, before botanical observers and 

 readers, many of whom may have far better opportunities of as- 

 certaining whether it be elsewhere recorded^ than your humble 

 servant, Z. 



[Perhaps it was as safe to omit it {D. octopetala) in the 'Cybele' 

 till better authority than the Letters from Wales, and Nicholson's 

 ' Cambrian Tourist's Guide,' could be quoted. The occurrence of 



* In other matters — therefore why not in this about Dryas octopetala ? — we find /*,*^ j. 

 that the assertions of Mr. Evans have need to be received with some degree of can- ,4^^ 'J 

 tion ; for instance, he enumerates among the plants to be found in the vicinity of the 

 Grreat Glyder, Sioertia perennis, page 194, and Bulbocodium vernum, at page 197. q 

 Let us hope W. P. and others wUl not fail to keep a sharp outlook for these. 



