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yet, owing to the misleading indication, a new plant published 

 therein was cited later as one of the novelties of 1888. 



There is no necessity to demonstrate the inconveniences arising 

 from these variously unsatisfactory methods of proceeding : but the 

 adduction of one or two examples of how the required information 

 should be supplied may bring about a remedy. Nothing can be 

 better, for example, than the plan adopted by* tin li ill, tin of the 

 Torrey club, which gives at the head of each number the exact date 

 of issue. This appears not easy to carry out, but Dr. Britton has 

 somehow overcome the difficulty. The Botanical Gazette gives this 

 information on the cover, which seems easier : and if on the back 

 of the title-page of each volume the exact date of each number were 

 given, nothing more could be wished. Our own plan of putting the 

 month at the bottom of each sheet is sufficient for most purposes, 

 as the Journal of Botany is not wont to be delayed after the first of 

 each month. 



For publications appearing at uncertain intervals, the plan 

 adopted in the Journal of the Linnean Society is that which should 

 be universally employed. On the back of the title-page of each 

 volume is given the date of each number included in it : thus — 



"No. 197, pp. 1-67, published August 22, 1891." 

 Nothing more is needed to secure complete information as to the 

 date to be assigned to each species published in the part ; and it is 

 to be hoped that this simple means of identification will at once be 

 adopted. 



The same plan is employed by Sir J. D. Hooker in the Flora 

 if Jlritish India, and should be followed in every similar work which 

 is issued in parts. It is, indeed, so simple and so obvious that only 

 the inconvenience resulting from its non-adoption would have 

 induced me to bring it forward here. 



SAGINA REUTERI Boiss. IN BRITAIN. 

 By G. Claridge Druce, M.A., F.L.S. 

 Some specimens of a Sagina which had been gathered by Capt. 

 S. H. Stewart in the brickwork of Malvern Station were sent to the 

 Botanical Exchange Club in 1892 as a variety of Sagina apetala. It 

 was referred by critical botanists to S. cilia ta, to apetala var. pros- 

 tata, &c. At first I was inclined to pass the plants over as S. ciliata, 

 but on closer examination I could see no mucro on the two sepals, 

 as in true S. ciliata, and it recalled a form which I had previously 

 gathered in Northants and Berkshire which had all the sepals blunt, 

 yet adpressed to the calyx. Specimens were sent to Dr. Lange, of 

 Copenhagen, who reported that "the Sagina is not ,S\ ciliata, nor 

 S. apetala, but, if not a new species, must be referred to S. Re uteri 

 Boiss." This is figured in Willkomm's Icones et descriptiones Plant- 

 arum Nov. crit. et rar. vol. i. tab. 73 a: and is described on p. 114 

 I. c. as " Annua, pygmsea, multicaulis, radice tenui perpendiculari. 



