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brief summary of the botanical results of the expedition, which will 

 be placed in the National Herbarium. Dr. Gregory had referred 

 to a new tree Senecio, allied to S. J<>/ntstn>ii. and Mr. Carruthers 

 called attention to an interesting addition to the Bhynchopetalum 

 group of Lobelia, already represented in Tropical Africa, in Abys- 

 sinia, the Cameroons, and on Kilimanjaro. We hope to publish a 

 figure and description of Dr. Gregory's discovery in the March 

 number of this Journal. Mr. Carruthers added: — "Dr. Gregory's 

 plants demand a word or two in reference to the light they throw 

 on the distribution of vegetable life in Central Africa. His plants 

 from the coast level are pretty well known, but the less known 

 plants of the higher elevations have a special interest, because 

 on these isolated mountains we find a mixed vegetation, having 

 affinities with the European and Mediterranean floras on the one 

 side, and with the South African flora on the other. Thus among 

 Dr. Gregory's collections there are two Alchemillas, a Cardamine, 

 a Thalictrum, an Anagallis, and a Veronica, genera with which we 

 are familiar in our fields. Associated with them are several 

 southern forms, amongst which I may mention a new species of 

 heath. In the collection made on Milanji, in Nyassa-land, by Mr. 

 Whyte, under the direction of H. M. Commissioner, Mr. H. H. 

 Johnston, which was worked out at the British Museum, we found 

 two species of heath, carrying this Cape type further north in 

 tropical Africa than was previously known ; and now the species 

 collected by Dr. Gregory on Kenia extends its distribution fifteen 

 degrees beyond Milanji. A striking Helichrysum belongs to the 

 same southern type ; and I need only further allude to a new Disa, 

 which connects geographically the two species from Abyssinia with 

 the single species from Kilimanjaro and the large number of 

 species found further south. The botanical results of the expe- 

 dition will, from these illustrations, be seen to be important from 

 the point of view of the geographical distribution of plants, while 

 in the collection, which is, as I have said, necessarily limited, there 

 are important additions to the Flora of the region explored." 



Mr. F. Jeffrey, who has for several years assisted in the Kew 

 Herbarium, has left Kew in order to undertake similar work in the 

 Herbarium of the Royal Gardens, Edinburgh. 



The Index Kewensis is made the text for an article on Nomen- 

 clature in Nature for Jan. 11. It is a repetition of the "Plea of 

 Convenience " previously urged by Mr. Hemsley in the same 

 journal, and this line of argument has already been dealt with in' 

 our remarks on Mr. Hemsley's paper (Journ. Bot. 1892, 53). The 

 writer does not tell us what "circumstances of practical expediency" 

 are to be considered as justifying the retention of a name, or who 

 is to be the judge ; and he does not seem to see that the present 

 confusion is mainly due to the neglect in the past of the rule of 

 priority. But those who, like ourselves, believe that the name of 

 a plant is that under which it was first described under the genus 

 in which it is retained, as well as those who insist on the retention 

 of the oldest specific name, have at any rate a rule which is capable 



