FLORA OF CUMBERLAND. 
Flora of Cumberland | containing a full list of the flowering | atGeS 2 
and ferns to be found in the | county, according to the latest and m 
reliable authorities, by | William Hodgson | of Workington | Rania 
f the Linnzean Society of London | and late Botanical Recorder to the 
a i ort 
r 
_ Literature and Science | with an Introductory Chapter | on the Soils 
of Cumberland, by | J. G. Goodchild | H.M. Geological Survey | of the 
Museum of Science and Art, eewiase | with a Map of the County | 
Carlisle | W. Meals and Co me Dpetgne Street | 1898 uti cloth, 
Pp- Xxxvi-+ 398 + folding map, “price 7 
The venerable author of the ne of Cumberland is to ce con- 
gratulated on at last seeing his volume through the press. It has 
been long and anxiously awaited, and I may add that six years 
ago I denied myself the pleasure of publishing a similar work 
because it was understood that everything which was of value 
for the historical portions of such an undertaking were in the 
possession of, or had been specially utilised by, Mr. Hodgson. It 
is therefore with mingled feelings that I take the volume in hand. 
_No one more competent for the task could possibly be found, and 
the work has been a labour of love. It is impossible, however, 
to resist the feeling that, with such resources at his command, 
the author might have given us much more information. There 
is little or nothing in the volume to indicate that access had 
been obtained to special sources of information, and no attempt 
has been made to trace the history of botany in the county in 
a systematic and scientific way, or to supply a key to the dates 
at which first records were made respecting the more interesting 
plants. The list of plants and habitats is no doubt as full and 
perfect as present knowledge could make it, and certainly the 
author has been most careful to verify the records. My own 
copy of Baker’s ‘Flora of the Lake District,’ which has been 
my constant companion for the last twelve years, and is pro- 
fusely annotated with records for every part of the county, has 
been utilised by Mr. Hodgson to the full, and his tribute to the 
same is more than ample. But it would have been an immense 
boon to the student had the author, out of the mass of earlier 
material at his disposal, indicated when the species first came 
under notice. Some few records are quite modern, but many 
date back to the time of Bp. Nicolson and Thomas Lawson. 
Mr. Hodgson has prepared some excellent papers which have 
appeared from time to time in the ‘Transactions of the 
Cumberland and oc canilen 3 Association,’ but we do not 
se nk he has embodied all the results of those productions in 
Pril 1899, ° 
