BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC; 39 
our land; the grassy roadsides are eve ery year more and more 
neo upon, and, when allowed to remain, are used as dumping- 
grounds for road- -scrapings. To make matters worse, the clippings 
and nr -up plants are in many cases not removed, but are left to 
wither where they have fallen, thus further disfiguring the already 
marred hedgebank. We are at a loss to understand how it is that 
the Selborne Society, which one would expect to be foremost in 
opposing mischief of this kind, has apparently taken no action in the 
matter, which, so far as we are aware, does not even receive due 
attention in Nature Notes, the Society’s magazine 
Mr. W. H. Jounson, who has published a little volume on The 
‘Cultivation and Preparation of Para mcm pea Lockwood and 
n), was, as. he tells us on his title-page (!) ‘‘ Commissioned by 
Government in 1902 to Visit Ceylon to Study the Methods em- 
ployed there in the Cultivation and Preparation of Para Rubber and 
other Agricultural Staples for Market, with a view to introduce 
them into West Africa.” In his preface, wide dates from the 
‘* Royal Botanic Gardens s, Kew, 8.W.”—Kew is not «$.W.”—he 
tells us that his object is to give practical oath “to the con- 
tinually increasing number of persons taking up Rubber culti- 
vation ’’; he has supplemented his own observations by “ frequent 
extracts” from other works, and the body of information brought 
together will doubtless be useful. But the book is about the dearest 
we have ever seen: 7s. 6d. (net) is a high price to er or 99 page. 
of large eek. with 12 of still more lavis y printed “ ore .: 
even when supplemented by six illustrations and a 64-page cata- 
logue of the miscellaneous works of the same publishers. 
Tue record of our native hepatic- ra is steadily i ig ae 
London Gakaloc yue of Mosses and Hepatics in 1881 gave a total of 192 
species of Hepatice, which rose to 290 | in the Moss Exchange Club 
List in 1897, and now reaches 262 in the Bet H. W. Lett’s Caeley® 
of British sepeties Eastbourne : Sumfield, 1904, not priced). As 
compared with Lett’s Hepatice of the Bia Islands (1902), the 
Catalogue apnears to add — poe eighteen species, and twelve 
the other fine Anastrepta, pine oniella, and Eremonotus; 1 are chips 
off older genera. Mniopsis and Herberta are transferred to positions 
to which they are better fitted. Lejeunia serpyilifolia is-followed by 
two names, “‘ cavifolia’’ and ‘‘ heterophylla,” the former a synonym, 
the latter a species; in ae en rated them both as varieties of 
L. serpyllifotia. The rigorous suppression of all capitals in the 
specific names,—e. g. holtit, dillenti, stableri—is a mistake; but as 
to the usefulness of the catalogue as a whole there is no question. | 
A REPRESE hg series of the ferns of North-west India, from 
the tiaebarinit of the late C. W. Hope, including the types of his new 
species, has been presented e the British Museum - by his son, 
an Ho This is a very valuable acquisition for 
National Hesnaiate: for Mr. C. Ww Hope had made himself the 
leading authority on the fern-flora of the district in ee | 
published a long ert critical treatise — Presta = North- oS 
Western India ”’— with thirty-five ee in vole = ae 
