CURRENT LITERATURE. 
The Kew Index. 
The completion of this great work deserves special recognition, al- 
though the previous parts have been already noticed in this journal. 
It is difficult to overestimate its value to all those who deal with the 
names of flowering plants, and associated as it is with the name of 
Darwin, it becomes another proof of his sagacity. Drs. Hooker and 
Jackson and the staff at Kew are to be congratulated upon its prompt 
appearance, as well as upon its contents. With its 1,300 large closely 
printed pages of three columns each, it suggests an amount of work that 
is fairly appalling,and that could only have been accomplished within 
reasonable time with such force and material as are to be had at Kew. 
First appearing in 1893 it is a completed work in 1895, and hence is 
one of the few large works that is practically synchronous throughout. 
Botanists have already consulted it too extensively to need informa- 
tion as to its plan and purpose. The title page suggests that it is an 
“index to the names and authorities of all known flowering plants and 
their countries,” with 1885 as the most recent date. In so vast a work 
it is impossible to avoid oversights and mistakes. It is only a wonder 
that they are not more numerous. Monographers will occasionally 
find that the reference cited is not the original one, but it usually 
takes a monographer to discover that. 
There is one feature that we could wish had been different, and that 
is the matter of synonymy. A work of such great extent can not pre- 
tend to have made a monographic study of its whole field, and, there- 
fore, much of the synonymy must be uncertain. We do not doubt that 
there is great familiarity with all plant groups at Kew, but in such a 
tremendous bibliography as the Index indicates, many of the expres- 
sions of opinion must have been “off-han ”? Jt has seemed to us 
that if the Index had been a simple list of plant names, with no indi- 
cations of synonymy, it would have been a fairer representation of the 
real value of the work. All questions of identity and of nomencla- 
ture might as well have been avoided, and the book made a record of 
fact rather than opinion. As it is, one can not be sure of the synon- 
ymy without investigation; and, if investigation be needed, what is the 
special value of the synonymy except by way of suggestion? This, if 
tightly understood, however, does not interfere in the least with the 
usefulness of the book, and botanists are under large obligation, as 
they have ever been, to Kew and Mr. Darwin. 
[595] 
595 
35—Vol. XX.—No. 11. 
