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NOTICES OF BOOKS. 

 A Monograph of Lichen* fmnni in I! n't/tin . hi imi o <l< sm) dee nitaln'/io: 



of the .y'xries in the llerh,triu»t <>f the Ileitis Museum. By the 



Rev. James M. Crombie, M.A., F.L.S., F.G.S., &c. Part I. 



London : Printed by order of the Trustees. 1894. Price 16s. 



Pp. viii, 520 ; figg. 74. 

 " Here let none unskilled in Lichenology enter." Such is the 

 conclusion to which one is speedily led upon looking into Mr. 

 Crombie's Catalogue of British Lichens; and such would have 

 formed an appropriate inscription wherewith to adorn the cover. 

 For difficult, most difficult, is the study of Lichens, and abstruse 

 and severely technical is the character of the Catalogue. Heavy 

 tribulations await the would-be student. Rough and toilsome is 

 Lin path; and few are likely to surmount its obstacles and pursue 

 lU measure of success. To take an illustration, one of the 

 many difficulties which confront the wretched student at the outset 

 is the extraordinarily complex and cumbrous terminology, to which 

 a general course of botany is little or no preparation. Lichenologists 

 are in the habit of describing their plants in terms of one another. 

 They call, for instance, the apothecia of the genus Leptogkmi " leca- 

 norine or biatoroid." One knows that there is a genus Lecanora, 

 and naturally turns up the description of its apothecia, thinking to 

 settle the question of their structure once for all. But what does 

 one find ? The apothecia of Lecanora are " lecanorine, occasionally 

 biatoroid." Well, that won't work. Let us try Biatora. This 

 turns out to be an old genus which is no longer maintained ; it is 

 now merged in Lecidea — a vast genus containing hundreds of species, 

 of which the apothecia are "biatorine, gyalectoid, or lecideine." 

 Sold again ! The upshot of all this is that a copious glossary is an 

 indispensable adjunct to every Handbook of Lichens, and incessant re- 

 course must be had to it. Therein shall you find such figures of speech 

 as " isidio-furfuraceous," "coralloideo-granuloso-crustaceous," '-li- 

 vido-carneo-fuseescent," &c. — epithets far more effective than those 

 elementary geometric terms with which the great O'Connell silenced 

 the abusive old Irish fishwife. 



But to return to Mr. Crombie's Catalogue. As was mentioned 

 above, it is of a very technical character ; and an adequate review can 

 only be written by an expert who by a life-long study of this difficult 

 group of plants has made himself thoroughly acquainted with their 

 systematic values. The readers of this Journal may, however, be in- 

 terested to have a short account of the nature and contents of the work. 



Mr. Crombie's Monograph is, as is stated on the title-page, "a 

 descriptive catalogue of the species in the Herbarium of the British 

 Museum," and is " printed by order of the Trustees." Its origin is 

 explained by Mr. Carruthers in the prefatory note as being due to 

 the rearrangement and growth of the collection. At the same time 

 it includes very nearly, if not quite, all the species known to occur 

 in the British Isles. There are, for instance, a few which have been 

 described but never distributed, and thus they are unknown quan- 

 tities to any but the finders. 



