THE DILLENIAN HERBARIA 283 



in the history of British Botany (or more accurately of Botany in 

 Britain) — has fallen to the lot of Mr. Druce, who, with charac- 

 teristic industry, has throughout given the modern synonymy of 

 the plants mentioned by Dillenius in his correspondence or de- 

 scribed in his published works, as well as of the plants preserved 

 in the University Herbarium: this must have involved a vast 

 amount of labour and seems on the whole to be very carefully done. 

 He has also indicated what appear to be 8< first county records M — a 

 matter for which compilers of county floras will be grateful to 

 him, although it might perhaps have been left to them in the first 

 instance. If, indeed, the book is open to criticism, it is on the 

 somewhat uncommon ground that it contains too much rather than 

 too little ; e. g. we cannot but regret that Mr. Druce has been 

 unable to resist the temptation which so easily besets him, and has 

 taken the opportunity to publish a number of new combinations, 

 some at least of which cannot stand. 



The earlier portion of the book, after an excellent biography 

 with notes, contains a hitherto unpublished account of a journey 

 from London to North Wales in 1726, selections from MS. de- 

 scriptions of British plants, and copious extracts from Dillenius's 

 correspondence, including the letters to Samuel Brewer preserved 

 in the library attached to the National Herbarium, to which atten- 

 tion has more than once been called in these pages, and letters from 

 Littleton Brown, Richardson, and Haller. Mr. Druce refers to 

 but does not describe six letters in the Sloane MSS. addressed by 

 Dillenius to Sloane, Scheuchzer, and Brewer ; he will find one to 

 Peter Collinson in Hortus CoUinsonianus, p. 35. 



The identification of the plants in Dillenius's (the third) edition 

 of Ray's Synopsis follows the correspondence ; in thi3 Mr. Druce 

 acknowledges the help of specialists, but the bulk of the work so 

 far as the phanerogams is concerned is his own. The identifi- 

 cations are of course based on the Dillenian herbarium, except for 

 the fungi, which are not represented therein ; these are named 

 from Dillenius's drawings. It is in this part of the work that we 

 find the new combinations to which we have referred, some of 

 which we think have been printed without due consideration. For 

 example, on p. 115 we find five new combinations under Helle- 

 borine — a name adopted for Epipactis, as Mr. Druce informs us by 

 letter (there is no explanation in the book) on the supposition that 

 Hill employed the name for the genus as restricted by post-Linnean 

 authors. But a reference to the British Herbal (p. 477) shows that 

 Hill merely restores the name for the plants to which Linnaeus 

 applied the name Serapias — "he takes away the received name 

 and calls it serapias,' are his words ; and although it happens that 

 the British species described by Hill all belong to the group sub- 

 sequently segregated as Epipactis, Hill had no intention of so 

 restricting it, but used it as synonymous with the original Serapias 

 of Linnaeus. This is the more apparent because when Hill 

 intended to differ from the Linnean conception of a genus he 

 made his intention perfectly clear — thus under Radiola he says 

 " Linnaeus makes this a species of linum or flax, though it con- 



