DECEMBER 20, 1906 | 
MN 
“great house, and he obtained the Papal dispensation 
vacating the vow from Eugenius III., then living in 
France, according to this chronicle. 
The abbey being established and possessed of a fair 
estate—the original wooden buildings replaced by 
stone—Mr. Earle attempts to describe the state of the 
surrounding country and inhabitants. Although he 
occasionally uses a doubtful expression, such as “ the 
rich riding in carriages,’’ his description seems to us 
good. But when the relations of the rich and poor 
are summarised in such words as the poor man “‘ could 
not resist the Lord in the Lord’s own Manor Court,’’ the 
impression is produced that the author has made little 
study of ancient courts. The appalling results of the 
Black Death are well indicated, and the more this 
- terrible period is examined the more exalted do the 
monks, nuns, and priests of England appear. 
The essays on medizval land tenure contain much 
debatable matter, and many statements which, with- 
aut reference to authority, we cannot accept, as, for 
example, that the right to ‘‘common of pasture ”’ 
could be alienated. 
We have not space to discuss such questions, and 
must limit our concluding remarks to the fifth chapter. 
Here Mr. Earle states his views on the nature of bond- | 
men, and cites the curious case of Adam, son of Ivo 
Grise, drawing the inference that the descendants of 
a bondman could at any distance of time be claimed 
by the heirs of the original lord. The facts stated are 
hardly sufficient to support so large an inference, but | 
it certainly does seem that when the abbey acquired 
land from a ‘‘nativus ”’ or his son it was thought de- 
sirable to complete the title by purchasing the claim of 
the lord. 
It is not, of course, possible to treat with perfect | 
accuracy an antiquarian subject within the limits of a | 
small volume of less than two hundred pages, but we 
can commend Mr. Earle’s essays to the general public, 
as they are well written with proper sympathy with 
an old order now for ever passed away. 
Catalogue of the Plants of Kumaon and of the 
Adjacent Portions of Garhwal and Tibet. By 
Lieut:-General Sir Richard Strachey, G.C.S.I., &c., 
revised and supplemented by J. F. Duthie. Pp. 
vii+271. (London: Lovell Reeve and Co., Ltd., 
1906.) 
HIS catalogue is based on the collections made 
between the years 1846 and 1849, in the pro- 
vince of Kumaon and the adjoining parts of Garhwal 
and Tibet, by Lieut. (now Sir Richard) Strachey 
and Mr. J. E. Winterbottom. The collection was 
principally made along a line extending through the 
province of Kumaon across the Himalaya in a south- 
westerly to north-easterly direction, over a distance of 
eighty or ninety miles, from the plain of Rohilkhand 
at about 1000 feet above sea-level, to the Tibetan 
plateau at an altitude of 14,000 feet to 15,000 feet on 
the upper course of the River Sutlej. The collection, 
generally known as the Strachey and Winterbottom 
Herbarium, included more than 2000 species, and sets 
NO, 1938, VOL. 75 | 
NATURE I 
of the plants were presented more than fifty years ago 
to the important herbaria in this country and abroad, 
together with a provisional catalogue. The present 
catalogue includes, besides the species represented in 
the original Strachey and Winterbottom herbarium, 
the results of previous and subsequent botanical ex- 
ploration of the area from the time of Wallich, Royle, 
Falconer, Thomson, and others up to a comparatively 
recent period. Among the more important recent con- 
tributions to our knowledge of the Kumaon flora are 
the large collection made by the late Colonel Ander- 
son, chiefly in the vicinity of Naini-tal, and the results 
of the extensive botanical explorations made by Mr. 
Duthie during his term of residence as Government 
botanist in the North-West Provinces. 
Including a small number of cryptogams, the flora 
of Kumaon, as represented in the catalogue, contains 
3043 Species, representing 1084 genera. No fungi or 
algae are included, and only fifty genera of lichens; 
hence much remains to be done to give an adequate 
idea of the flora so far as cellular cryptogams are 
concerned. On the other hand, we may regard the 
representation of the flowering plants as fairly com- 
plete. Mr. Duthie makes a comparison with the flora 
of China on the one hand and of Britain on the other. 
Of the 137 natural orders of flowering plants repre- 
sented in Kumaon, 134 are found in China and 84 in 
Britain; of the 983 Kumaon genera, 812 occur in 
China and 287 in Britain; and of the 2672 Kumaon 
species, 1079 are Chinese and 226 British. The most 
predominant order in the area concerned, as estimated 
by number of species, is Gramineze (226 species), fol- 
lowed by Composit (211 species), Leguminosz (204 
species), and Orchidez (161 species). In the Eastern 
Himalaya and in British India as a whole, Orchidez 
occupy the first place, with Gramineze and Legum- 
inose taking the second and third and third and 
second places respectively in the two areas concerned, 
while Compositze stands fourth in the Eastern Hima- 
layas, and seventh in the whole of British India. For 
the whole world Composite stands first, Leguminosze 
second, Orchidez third, and Graminez fifth. 
The arrangement of the orders, genera, and species 
of the flowering plants is in accordance with that 
adopted in the ‘“‘ Flora of British India.’’ The ferns 
were named and arranged by the late Mr. C. W. Hope; 
and the Bryophyta by Mr. C. H. Wright, following 
the plan adopted by Mr. Mitten in 1859. The method 
of the catalogue is a tabular one; for each species or 
variety, there are indicated in a series of parallel 
columns the habit of growth, colour of flower, time of 
flowering, locality, elevation, and occurrence respec- 
tively in the Himalayas (rainy or dry), Tibet, China, 
and Britain. The book as a whole forms a remarkably 
clear and concise review of the flora of an eminently 
interesting district of the Western Himalayas. A 
useful appendix is given in the form of a list com- 
prising the determinations of the numbers in the 
Strachey and Winterbottom Herbarium according to 
the original catalogue and their equivalents in the 
present volume. Some of the changes are due to 
alterations of nomenclature, others to a more thorough 
investigation of the plants. isk NB} AR. 
