BOOK-NOTES, NEWS. ETC. 255 



mune to the local diseases might conceivably transmit that quality 

 to his children ; the other, falling a victim to the climate, would 

 leave no descendants. As instances he brought forward the case of 

 Crepis taraxacifolia, long known in Wales as a rarity, which in 189G 

 onwards became extremely abundant at Colwyn Bay. He con- 

 sidered that this might be accounted for by a different variety, 

 morphologically identical, yet physiologically distinct, having been 

 introduced, and, by its ability to adapt itself to its surroundings, had 

 rapidly extended its area of growth. Another case was of Carda- 

 mine pratensis, usually stated to grow in moist meadows, which is 

 accurate as regards North Wales, but in Kent its favourite habitat 

 is coppice woods, the second year after cutting the undergrowth. 

 It is frequent on dry banks, on masses of roots of trees or shrubs, 

 probably as xerophilous a station as could be imagined. 



At the meeting of the Linnean Society on 2nd May, 1907, 

 Professor E. B. Poulton exhibited the probate of the will of Richard 

 Anthony Salisbury (1761-1829). and manuscripts of Dr. W. J. 

 Burchell, which had been recently presented to the University of 

 Oxford by Mr. F. A. Burchell, of Ehodes University College, 

 Grahamstown, South Africa. The General Secretary exhibited, on 

 behalf of the owner, two portraits of John Fraser by John Hoppner 

 and Sir George Raeburn — the latter being the unacknowledged 

 source of the lithographed portrait in Hooker's Companion to the 

 Botanical Magazine, ii. p. 300 (1836). A note accompanying the 

 exhibit stated that Fraser's herbarium was presented in 1849 to 

 the Linnean Society, of which he was a Fellow, by his son, but 

 was disposed of in 1863. This, however, apparently refers, not to 

 Fraser's own herbarium, of which nothing is known, although (see 

 Comp. Bot. Mag. ii. 302) he evidently had one, but to the impor- 

 tant herbarium of Thomas Walter, which was presented to Fraser 

 by Walter, and was acquired by the Trustees of the British Museum 

 for the National Herbarium at the sale of certain of the Linnean 

 Society's collections in 1863. 



Last year we called attention to the very interesting series of 



papers on London Botanic Gardens, which Mr. P. £. F. Perredes, 

 F.L.S., was then publishing in the American Journal of Pharmacy. 

 These have now been issued in a neat volume of a hundred pages, 

 with thirty-one illustrations, as No. 62 of the publications of the 

 Wellcome Chemical Kesearch Laboratories. The gardens discussed 

 are Kew, the Royal Botanic Gardens, and the Chelsea Physic 

 Garden — the last-named, on account of its longer history and 

 greater interest, occupying half of the book. Mr. Perredes has 

 brought together a great deal of interesting information about the 

 gardens and their various curators, and his account is careful, and, 

 as far as space will allow, complete. It is to be regretted, however, 

 that there is nothing in the shape of an index of names of the 

 persons commemorated — an omission which detracts from the use- 

 fulness of the book. 



The first volume of the new edition of the Imperial Ga:ett?er of 

 India, which has just been published by the Clarendon Press (price 6*. 



