Literary Notices. 289 
Scirpus Holoschee‘nus is lost from Braunton Burrows is unfounded, as we 
have abundance of specimens from that spot, gathered three or four years 
ago. They will also find Tetcriwm Scordium in a very peculiar situation, 
growing in wet sand, whereas it is usually a fen plant. 
As we delight in ‘local Floras, we should be very ungrateful to quarrel 
with authors who have indulged our fancy ; 3 yet we doubt the expediency of 
making their work so bulky ‘and expensive, and should have been better 
satisfied if they had given us a list of species with their localities, and such 
new information as their diligence had enabled them to collect, and had not 
repeated twice over the generic and specific characters of the flowering 
plants for the sake of presenting the reader with both the Linnean and 
natural arrangement. A list of genera would have answered ev ery purpose. 
One of the chief objects at which scientific writers should aim, is to make 
science cheap and accessible to all. We wish, too, that the authors had con- 
sulted the latest authorities on their subject ; but we do not observe a single 
reference to Sir James Smith’s English Ilora, a work of indisputable merit, 
and on the question of species of the first authority. If his new views had 
been rejected, after due examination, we should have no right to complain, 
but they ought not to have been oy erlooked. The cryptogamic part is done 
with more care. 
After all, the work before us will be found useful to such persons as are 
residents within the county, and to those who are induced to visit “ De- 
von’s myrtle vales,” from curiosity, or in search of the inestimable blessing 
of health. The faults are not such as are of great importance to the 
learner; and the experienced botanist will have access to more general 
works to supply the deficiencies. — (cP 
Art. II. Literary Notices. 
LINDLEY and Hutton’s Fossil Flora of Great Britain. — 1 rejoice to see 
a Fossil Flora announced by two such scientific gentlemen as Professor 
Lindley and Mr. Hutton. The well known botanic a accuracy of the former 
will distinguish by the few remaining characters the fossils possess, whether 
their complete identity yet exists or not. This is a work which the mere 
English botanist would be incompetent to grapple with; for the entire 
Flora of the older formations consists in scitamineous plants, ferns, and 
palms, cacti, &c., the resemblances of which at present are only found 
within the tropics, although every coal measure in Europe abounds with 
similar specimens. The nearest resemblance to the present vegetables of 
England exists in the more recent formation of the London clay. In this 
stratum, at least, races of plants similar to those of Europe and North 
America are abundant, which is sufficiently obvious in glancing over the 
acorns and nuts that have been so plentifully procured from the Isle of 
Sheppy; yet even here some tropical remains are found, although more 
scantily. Inthe fossils of Colebrook Dale, syngenesious plants, mixed with 
the grasses, appear to be particularly abundant. The union of Mr. Hutton, 
of geological repute, with Mr. Lindley is a happy circumstance, and, I 
doubt not, a work of great utility to future geological one will be the 
result. I trust that it will be published consecutively, b eginning either 
with the more recent or primitive assemblages, a method that will imme- 
diately render the very first part of general utility ; a plan much more readily 
accomplished in fossid than in recent botany. — W. Masters. Canterbury, 
January, 1830. 
A Geological Flora of Europe is in contemplation by some French and 
German botanists, in which the plants will be classed according to the rocks 
and soils believed to be most congenial to them.—B, Paris, March 1830. 
