19^)6. Notes i3 
This discussion has brous^^ht out one point, which is new to me and 
probably to others, which I have not seen stated in print before, " that 
Mr. Praeger's scheme is now accepted by Irish botanists." Irish 
botanists may have silently adopted it, but, as was pointed out in the 
September number of this journal, it was not adopted in several recent 
works. My chief object has been to find out the views of others, and I 
think the result of this discussion will be useful. If Mr. Praeger's 
scheme is adopted by British botanists I hope it may be followed 
universally, in spite of what I consider its inconvenience in one detail. 
C. H. Waddei.1.. 
Saintfield. 
May I add a word of explanation to Mr. Waddell's note? I am exceeed- 
ingly glad to hear that Mr. Praeger's scheme of Irish county divisions has 
been adopted in the new Catalogue of Hepaticse., and I wish, as one whose 
stud}' of faunistic problems has not " been limited to distribution in this 
island," to protest with all courtesy against the suggestion that advocacy 
of Mr. Praeger's scheme is the outcome of any " narrow point of view." 
An English naturalist who settles in Ireland learns quickly that from the 
standpoint of biogeography Ireland is not an appendix of Great Britain, 
still less of the Shetlands, and from a general surve}' of the life of 
Western Europe he objects to any scheme that implies such an assump- 
tion, as unscientific and misleading The chief use of a set of numerals 
for the indication of distribution is to enable the student to grasp rapidly 
the range of any species. The first thing he wants to know, when in- 
vestigating distribution in the British Isles, is whether the species occurs 
in both Great Britain and Ireland, or in one only of them. The answer 
to this question is seen immediately from a scheme which gives Ireland 
an independent .set of county numbers, while it is obscured by any scheme 
with consecutive numbers for the whole of the British Isles. 
Incidentally Mr. Waddell raises the interesting question of the proper 
use of the word British " in natural history writings. At present it is 
used by some writers so as to include, by others so as to exclude, Ireland. 
Clearing our minds from all political, financial, and sentimental con- 
siderations, we must admit that whenever we discuss the distribution of 
plants or animals in the United Kingdom, an adjective to express 
" belonging to Great Britain" is badly wanted. I should like to repeat 
here a suggestion which I put forward two years ago in conjunction with 
my friend Mr. W. Evans, F.R.S.E. (^Proc. R. Phys, Soc, Edinb., \o\. 
p 219). We have two adjectives in current English speech — "British" 
and " Britannic " to which naturalists might easily attach definite geogra- 
phical meanings. Why not agree to use " British " in biological writings 
in a sense exclusive of Ireland, and ** Britannic " when we wish to include 
the whole archipelago } 
Geo. H. Carpenter. 
