I908-190J.] 



127 



instructive communications. One meeting was exclusively devoted 

 to an examination of the Fern collection in the Club's Herbarium, 

 a proceeding which interested our younger members greatly. 



It may here be recorded that the Herbarium has during the 

 winter been enriched by the addition of a large number of speci- 

 mens, the gifts of several friends. The result is that our collection 

 is now fairly complete, so far at least as the local flora is concerned. 

 Many of the plants recently added are very rare, and a few of them 

 are the specimens collected as first records by the original finders. 

 But besides the local plants we have also received specimens 

 collected elsewhere, thus, for example, the most recent addition, 

 the gift of Mr. Arthur W. Stelfox, was a series of Alpines collected 

 in Norway last summer. Most of these specimens are very rare 

 in the British Isles, and some of them, such as Saxifraga 

 cotyledon, do not occur in Britain at all. 



The thanks of the Section, and indeed of the Club as a whole, 

 are due to Mr. Sylvanus Wear for the admirable manner in which 

 he has overhauled the botanical collections in the Herbarium. 

 Mr. Wear, for several months past, has devoted a great deal of 

 time to numbering the collections in accordance with the recently 

 published Tenth Edition of the London Catalogue. He has 

 likewise re-mounted, labelled, and catalogued all the recent 

 acquisitions — a labour of love to him, but one which very few of 

 our members would have cared to undertake. His last gift to the 

 Section is an elaborately compiled manuscript Topographical 

 Index to the Flora of the North-East of Ireland, in which at a 

 glance can be seen the references to the Plants recorded from 

 the various localities in our district. 



Finally, many members of the Club, who are not themselves 

 working botanists, might advantageously assist the Section and 

 the botanical work 6f the Club, if, when opportunity offers, they 

 secured some interesting rarity for the Herbarium. Likewise, it 

 will be taken as a favour if any new local finds are reported to the 

 Honorary Secretary of the Section, so that our annual record of 



