50 NOTES AND NEWS. 



now as regards getting anything like a bramble name from them ; 

 Briggs and Webb are as good as any one, I think, now.' Alas ! all 

 the four have alike left us. But I quote for the purpose of fixing 

 a point of transition ; a new era in ru biology was beginning, the way 

 of looking at things was altering, until to-day, thanks to contact and 

 concertion with continental observers in their wider field, the brambles 

 are understood more rationally than ever before. 



More approachable than Lord Tabley, Prof. Babington's services 

 to young aspirants after a field knowledge of native plants, were 

 such as the votaries of English Flora cannot soon forget. With his 

 ' Manuals' from 1843 onwards, marvels of concise arrangement from 

 the first, the fifth edition specially making 4 a new departure,' and his 

 fc Flora of Cambridge' (i860) he may be said to have toed the mark 

 and led off in showing how the spring should be made across the 

 stream of academic formalism to the bank of lowly wild flowers, 

 waiting in beauty on the other side, and taught us how to love them 

 the better for the introduction he gave ! His Pythias, his intimate 

 friend and unobtrusive collaborator in this work for the cause of 

 botany, was, for long years, the Rev. W. W. Newbould. My recol- 

 lection of keenest unalloyed joy, in res Botanicce, is of a visit with 

 the two to Wicken Fen to make the acquaintance of Viola (stagnina) 

 in her humble home. Another red-letter day was a train trip to 

 Canvey Island to gather the lovely Lathy rus tuberjsus. The writer's 

 correspondence with him (regrettably, yet naturally) practically ceased 

 with the issue of the West Yorkshire Flora in 1889. F.A.L. 





NOTES AND NEWS. 



The ' Journal of Conchology ' for January contains a useful list of the Land 

 and Freshwater Mollusea of the English Lake District, by Captain W. J. Farrer, 

 in which may be noted the discovery of Vertigo inoulinsiana near Keswick, and 

 a record of the introduction of the non-native Helix cantiana. 



It is a pleasure to note that the Conchological Society, which flourished so 

 well at Leeds for about twenty years, is increasing rapidly in numbers now that 

 its headquarters are transferred to Manchester, the Lancashire naturalists joining 

 freely now that the Society holds its meetings in their county. 



The • Journal of Conchology,' which is the Society's official organ, resumes its 

 usual aspect, now that the very long paper on Lifu shells has come to an end. 



The elaborate and lengthy paper in which Mr. J. Cosmo Melvill, M.A., 

 F.L.S., and Mr. Robert Standen have enumerated the Shells sent from Lifu ana 1 

 Uvea, Loyalty Islands, by the Rev. James and Mrs. Hadfield, has been reprinted 

 from the 'Journal of Conchology 5 in the form of a Manchester * Museum Hand- 

 book.' It is illustrated by a couple of plates, and on the cover is an excellent 

 sketch map of the Loyalty Islands and New Caledonia, The authors in naming 

 new species and varieties have shown themselves not ungrateful for even the 

 smallest assistance rendered by their Lancashire friends. 



Naturalist, 



