1867.] Botany and Vegetable Physiology. 389 



terranea is met with in Ireland, France, Spain, and Portugal. 

 Whether the species be the Irish or Swiss species, its occurrence 

 in Devonshire is sufficiently remarkable, and should cause careful 

 search in the locality, which Dr. Hance expressly states was quite 

 wild and distant from cultivated land. At the same time very great 

 importance cannot be attached to an identification resting on a 

 solitary specimen gathered so long since, and which may have oc- 

 curred under circumstances which would explain the matter, but 

 which have now escaped Dr. Hance's recollection. 



Double-flowered Ranunculus. — Dr. Maxwell Masters describes 

 a case of double-flower in Ranunculus jicaria, the chief interest of 

 which resides in the structure of the carpels and ovules. The 

 carpels were open, and the ovules sprang from the inner surfaces of 

 these carpellary leaves like little buds. The occurrence of two 

 ovules instead of one, in these monstrous fruits, is noteworthy, as 

 also the fact of their originating neither from the margins of the 

 carpellary leaf, nor from a prolonged axis, but from its inner sur- 

 face. The rarity with which perfect seeds of Ranunculus ficaria 

 are formed is to be attributed to the deficiency of pollen in the 

 anthers of these flowers. Ranunculus auricomus is frequently 

 sterile, and other plants of the order exhibit a frequent tendency to 

 the unisexual form. R. bulbosus has not been recorded with 

 unisexual flowers, but Dr. Masters recently met with a luxuriant 

 specimen of this species in which every flower was fertilized, 

 although there were no perfect stamens in the flowers. 



Babingtons Manual of Botany. — A sixth edition of this work, 

 so highly valued by every English critical botanist, has just been 

 published. Fifteen plants are admitted into the manual as genuine 

 additions to the British Flora, while five species are recognized as 

 certainly naturalized foreign species. Nearly all of these species 

 have been recorded, and some of them figured, as they were dis- 

 covered in Dr. Seeman's very excellent journal of Botany. It has 

 been remarked that the comforts and duties of a University chair 

 too often divert its occupier from those labours which were the 

 stepping-stones to the honourable position. This assuredly is not 

 the case with Professor Babington, nor do we know of any chair at 

 either of the English Universities of which so unpleasant an 

 assertion could be maintained with truth. 



New Lichens from Cader Idris.- — The Keverend W. A. 

 Leighton, in the June number of the ' Annals,' describes a licheno- 

 logical tour in the neighbourhood of Dolgelly. Cader Idris appears 

 to be a wonderfully productive locality in the way of lichens and 

 mosses, the only disadvantage it presents to the collector being 

 that which befel Mr. Leighton — that of losing the path on the 

 mountain in misty weather while absorbed in the search for speci- 

 mens. By his excursion Mr. Leighton has added to our British 



