SUFFOLK PLANTS 203 



familiar plants, are certainly preferable to the hackneyed reappear- 

 ances to which we are only too accustomed ; but both in them and 

 in the text we have been struck with the comparatively slight 

 reference to species of special pharmacological interest. 



If, as we think may well be the case, pharmaceutical students 

 require an introductory text-book other than that used by other 

 students, we fear that in England they will consider half-a-guinea 

 rather a high price for one covering only their first year's work. 

 Considering his well-known special knowledge of the subject, we 

 look forward to the companion volume on Commercial Pharma- 

 cognosy which is promised in the Preface, and which will cover 

 ground far less preoccupied than does the volume now under notice. 



g. s. boulger. 



Suffolk Plants. 



The account of the flowering plants of Suffolk which Mr. C. E. 

 Salmon contributes to the recently issued " Victoria History " of 

 the county was, we understand, prepared by him in 1906, and is 

 thus a little belated in appearing. But this does not materially 

 detract from its usefulness, and the future author of a complete 

 Flora of the county will be grateful to Mr. Salmon for this careful 

 summary of what is known to the time of its compilation. He 

 will also be grateful for the careful division of the county into (five) 

 botanical districts based on the river basins ; and, although he 

 may amplify, he will find little if anything to correct in the list of 

 Suffolk observers which precedes the account of the plants. We 

 do not, however, understand why Mr. Salmon speaks of Miller's 

 reference to Lathy rus maritimus in Gard. Diet. ed. 8 (1768) as " the 

 earliest mention of a Suffolk plant " ; the extract he gives shows 

 that the use of the plant in a period of dearth (1555) is noted by 

 Stowe and Camden, and Miller himself records it in his first edition 

 (1731). Mr. Salmon adds "(!)" to his mention of " the fact," but 

 is there any sufficient reason for doubting its accuracy ? We 

 think that " Mr. Barker of Beccles, an industrious botanist who," 

 as Buddie, writing about 1697, tells us, " without banter knows to 

 a yard square of ground where every rare plant of [Lothingland] 

 grows, having search'd for it for these severall years past " (see 

 Journ. Bot. 1901, 78), may claim precedence of Sir John Cullum 

 as •' undoubtedly the first botanist resident in the county." 



Suffolk has a larger number of flowering plants than either of 

 its adjoining counties : Mr. Salmon places its record at 1180 

 species as against 1197 for Norfolk, 1083 for Essex, and 1007 for 

 Cambridge. The rarer plants are for the most part also found in 

 Norfolk and Cambridge, the one "unique production" of the 

 county being Pulmonaria officinalis, discovered at Burgate in 

 1862 by C. J. Ashfield and considered by Mr. Marshall, who has 

 seen it there, to be "a true native of Suffolk." 



The " species worthy of special notice " are treated separately 

 under each of the districts ; " those unique in [each] division 

 [are printed] in larger type" — an unnecessary distinction, it 

 seems to us, and one which gives the printed page a singularly 



