218 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



Astragalus described by Eay, Hist. p. 939, as Glaux montana 

 purpurea nostra, where he quotes for it several locahties in 

 Carabridgeshire. This is clear from what Smith says in Eng. 

 Bot. loc. cit.\ "By the synonyms .... it [the British plant] 

 seems to have been much misunderstood, which arose from 

 Linnaeus referring Eay's figure and description to his arenarncs 

 . . . Linnaeus afterwards strangely confounded it with epiglottis 

 [this is not the case; Linnaeus confused epiglottis with his 

 hypoglottis, but not wdth the British plant ; see below] , but at 

 length atoned for all by his excellent description in the Mantissa 

 altera, where he first gives it as a new species by the name of hypo- 

 glottis, wdiich Dr. Sibthorp learned from the Linnean herbarium." 



But the British plant is A. danicus Eetz. and is rightly 

 referred to that species by Stokes in Withering Arrangt. ed. 2, 

 p. 787 (1787), whilst the specimen in question is A. purpureus. 

 There is no specimen of A. danicus in the Linnean herbarium ; 

 none of A. purpureus but seven of A. danicus in Smith's. 

 Evidently neither Sibthorp nor Smith were really acquainted 

 with A. purpureus or noticed that the specimen in Herb. Linn, 

 differ from the British plant. 



De Candolle not unnaturally followed the authority of the 

 English botanist who was in touch with Linnaeus's herbarium, 

 and after him it became the received opinion that A. hypoglottis L. 

 = A. danicus Ketz. 



The first note of suspicion had already been sounded by 

 Eobert Brown in a paper on " The Botanical History of 

 Angus" read before the Edinburgh Natural History Society on 

 Jan. 26th, 1792, but first printed in this Journal for 1871, pp. 

 321-327. Brown there doubts the applicability of Linnaeus's 

 description to the British plant, but he also objects to an 

 identification of this plant with A. danicus because he wrongly 

 supposes Eetzius's species to be annual. His remarks, therefore, 

 do not assist either view, and his own idea that the Angus plant 

 is a new species may be disregarded. 



It was really Lange who refuted the prevailing view that 

 A. hypoglottis = A. danicus. This he had done twice successfully 

 before that view w^as revived by Bunge. Lange's opinion is of 

 exceptional importance on account of his intimate acquaintance 

 with the living plants both of Denmark and of Spain. 



In the second edition of his Haandbog i den Danske Flora, 

 p. 470 (1856-1859), he says: "The hitherto general opinion that 

 A. danicus Eetz. is synonymous wdth A. hypoglottis L. I cannot 

 agree with. The Linnean A. hypoglottis is described thus: 

 'legum. replicatis, compressis, acumine reflexo,' and is said to be 

 \\Vq A. pentaglottis, \Nh.\Gh. ^OQ?, not at all suit our plant. More- 

 over, A. hypoglottis is stated to be from Spain, but A. danicus 

 appears to grow in England, Denmark, and isolated districts of 

 Germany, to be wanting in France, '•' and from all the data 



* Corrected to " Western France" in the 1888 edition of the Haandbog. 

 It is plentiful in the French Alps. 



