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THE CHRONOLOGY OF FLORA. 
First Records | of | British Flowering Plants. | Compiled by | WiLLtam A. 
CLarkKe, F.L.S. | Reprinted, with Additions and Corrections, from the | 
‘Journal of Botany,’ 1892-6. | together with a | Note on Nomenclature, 
|— | London: | West, Newman & Co., . . . | 1897. [Demy 8vo, 
pp. ii. +103. Price 3s. 6d 
PARADOXICALLY the fullest thanks of botanists are due to Mr. Clarke 
for the thankless labours of this work—surely labours of love, for the 
ways to it are thorny, and the gaps and side tracks tempting to error 
many indeed. Every field botanist should possess it, if only as 
an example of method, of careful delving in the very broken ground 
of early British Botany. Though only a small book, thoughtfully 
provided with an index, its centum of pages are cram-full of suggestive 
facts, the bringing together of which has meant immense labour. 
Following the plan squared by Trimen and Dyer in 1869 as to their 
Middlesex area alone, for each species-name (barring dubious splits 
and varieties) in the ‘ London Catalogue’ of 1886, the reference is 
given (date, pater, and extract) of its ear/iest observance in Britain. 
A work of such a kind finds its meed of praise in the standard of 
accuracy itself raises: no such dealing with a multitude of (often 
obscure) details can be quite flawless, and yet this comes very near 
to that most-to-be-wished-for consummation. 
Nothing but a comparative analysis of the result in one or two 
chosen directions, leaving all the rest untouched upon, can make a 
review of such a work ‘improving.’ The writer, therefore, will take 
Yorkshire and Lincolnshire—as best known to him bibliographically 
—and try to give some idea of the fascinating mine of treasure to 
which, like the dy of its portals is the ‘Open S : 
It will gratify those more specially interested in the county of 
broad acres to learn that.out of the 1,440 species whose first notice 
as British has been traced back, Yorkshire has the honour of 
furnishing 7o ‘Earliest Records’—a much larger number than for 
any other area of like size, if we except that of the ‘home counties,’ 
Cambridge, Essex, Herts, Surrey, and Kent, which lay nigher at 
hand to the herbalists and botanists of the 17th and 18th centuries. 
Of these seventy, it is remarkable that only two (Senecio palustris, 
How, 1650—and Eriophorum gracile, Woods, 1835) are extinct ! 
One other in its ‘ first-record station’ (Pyrola secunda, Ray, Cat., 1670, 
not 1690 as our author has it) at Hazlewood, near Aberford, 1s an 
ambiguity ; for another species of the genus has grown there from 
time immemorial, and grows there still. There is no record for the 
true thing save as a name until 1724, I think ; and the stations for it 
are in a quite different part of the county. 
April 1897. 
a 9h 
