240 REVIEW: THE NEW LONDON CATALOGUE OF PLANTS 
accentuated in this 9th. It should wot have been issued yet—not 
until the completion of the Suppl. to E. B., of Mr. Hanbury’s 
Monograph on the Hawkweeds, and of a new Student’s Flora or 
Manual, So much for the general aspect of the matter; as for the 
individual curiosities, however amusing, taken apart they are no 
doubt trivial by comparison. Here I can only mention a few at 
random, but the capital and a capital instance must have lady’s 
place. A demonstrandum ad absurdum of over-modest pedantry is 
seen in the case of the Rock Sandwort (No. 263), which being, 
in this broth which too many cooks have prepared, thrown in with 
the Buda family—whereas it ‘ was not’ when Adanson, Buda’s pafer, 
wrote—has no bondsman or sponsor at all, but, unaffiliated with 
its author, stands Auda rupestris, a naked, botanical foundling! 
Laughable, truly, but if L.C.C. had been added to represent the 
catalogue committee we are told of in the Explanations, those 
notable initials might have been supposed to have some connection 
with the London County Council; none the less they stand 
responsible for one of the worts of the empire! 
Other alterations sound strangely instead of the household words 
all are familiar with. The time-honoured Hyacinthus—our beloved 
Bluebell—having been sunk in Sci//a by Salisbury, must have /es¢a/ss 
forsooth ! for its name now in place of the suitable sobriquet of 
nutans allowed it by Smith, who was not nodding when he avoided the 
Charybdis of his forerunner. 
Our old friend the Tormentil, the fugacious golden stars of 
which stud the open breast of the heath, is lost to us in Potentilla 
sylvestris Neck.—another bad name, because, though antedating the 
Linnean Tormentilla by two years, it is not specially nor even commonly 
a plant of shade and woodland. Another glaring example of servile 
precisianism is the deletion of the time-honoured Linnean Mentha 
sylvestris, understanded of Ray and Martin Lister (published in the 
2nd ed. of ‘Species Plantarum’ in Sept. 1762), in deference to the 
Hudsonian name of ongifolia, his ‘ Flora Anglica’ doubtfully beating 
in the press race its famous rival by a month! Useless to multiply 
instances, however ; from the first family to the last the resurrectionist 
has been at work, and Burke-ing (if the term may be permitted) live 
for the regaining of early dead forms, has used mercilessly the fleam 
of a rule rigidly wielded, secundum artem. To the dilettante the new 
catalogue will be anathema, and yet it is not without good features 
of its own. Foremost of these is the indication of known hybrids 
by means of the sign of the cross ( x )—happy, inevitable symbol !— 
arranged under the species-mother’s name and followed by that of 
the supposed other parent. This botanic affiliation is much preferable 
Naturalist, 
