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REVIEWS 



Druce's List of British Plants* 



The appearance of this Httle octavo of 204 pages, containing 

 the names of 734 genera and 2,958 species, besides a very large 

 number of varieties, may be regarded as an important event in 

 the history of EngHsh botany. However inconvenient its pursuit 

 by one's self or by others, nomenclature is a department of 

 botany that is of fundamental importance. As a very general 

 rule, those botanists who are indifferent to it are not numbered 

 among either the more careful or the better informed, a fact 

 which, in the nature of the case, could not be otherwise. The 

 study of botany, native and foreign, in England, has suffered 

 through the neglect of this subject, a neglect which has been to 

 a great extent forced upon many who disapprove of it, by the 

 exigencies of official requirement. Oxford is one of the places 

 where such repressive influence is least felt, and it is but natural 

 that the rational revision of British plant names should have been 

 there undertaken. The attitude of Mr. Druce toward this sub- 

 ject was made very clear when he successfully contended for the 

 starting point in priority that has since been almost universally 

 accepted. Pharmaceutical botany felt his influence when he rec- 

 ognized the doctrine of priority, and rejoiced that the principles 

 of Bentley and Trimen were to be by him maintained. His 

 opinions are illustrated by the following extract from the preface 

 to the "List" : 



" The oldest generic and specific name is chosen where pos- 

 sible, the starting-point being the first edition of the Species 

 Plantariim of 1753, a date and work first suggested by the com- 

 piler in a paper on novcit.Xi(:\2X\!iX&{^PJLarinaceiitical Jojirnal, p. 789, 

 1892). At that time, the date of the first edition of the Genera 

 Plantartun, 17 '^7, was adopted by the committee which framed 

 the Paris ' Leges' as the starting-point of generic citation, and it 

 was only after some considerable correspondence that the writer 



*List of British plants, containing the Spermophytes, Pteridophytes and Charads 

 found either as natives or growing in a wild state in Britain, Ireland, or the Channel 

 Isles. By George Claridge Druce, M.A., F.L.S. , Secretary of the Botanical Ex- 

 change Club and Fielding Curator in the University of Oxford. Clarendon Press, 

 1908. 



