12 
The Irish Natvralist. 
January^ 
NOTES. 
BOTANY. 
The Numbering of the Botanical County-Divisions of Ireland. 
The new Catalogue of British Hepaticie, with their distribution in 
the county-divisions, which is practically a new edition of the " London 
Catalogue," has just been published. Mr. Praeger's enumeration has 
been adopted for the Irish county-divisions. When I sent my note last 
July to the Irish Naturalist and the Jotirnal of Botany, I had hoped it 
would have been possible to find out the general opinion of those 
interested in the matter before printing. Without some general agree- 
ment I would not press the adoption of my scheme, since an inconvenient 
system which all agree to use is preferable to a better one, which meets 
with only partial support. As time pressed it was decided therefore for 
the present, at any rate, to use Mr. Praeger's scheme. 
In the present catalogue I. has been used for Ireland as in the 
"London Catalogue," and placed before the series of Irish county- 
divisions, "e.g., Fossombronia angnlosa (Dicks) Raddi i, L, i, 2, 3." 
In quotations and general use I. should be repeated before each Irish 
number Ii., I2, as Mr. Praeger suggests, and I am sorry a note to this 
effect was not appended. This seems all that can be done conveniently 
to prevent confusion. Mr. Praeger's term county division seems to me 
preferable to Watson's vice-coimty, and CD. would be a convenient 
contraction for it. 
I am glad that my remarks in the Irish Naturalist for September 
have led to so much discussion, but I am sorry that we have only had 
the views of those whose studies have been limited to distribution in 
this island, so that the matter has been regarded from the Irish, and, 
as I conceive, narrow point of view. If their work had been in a larger 
field they would, I am convinced, have experienced the inconvenience 
of which I complain, and been more inclined to accept m}' ideas. If, as 
Mr. Colgan thinks, it is a question for Irish botanists alone, and to be 
settled to suit their convenience, irrespective of those who study the 
distribution of the fauna and flora of the British Isles as a whole, then, 
of course, I have no standing ground. Mr. Colgan objects to the use of 
the word British as an adjective for British Isles, and supports it by 
political and financial reasons into which I cannot follow him in these 
pages. There is ambiguity in the use of the adjective. Would he have 
me use "Great-British" and British? lam content to follow the use 
of the many British Floras, which include Irish plants, and of the 
London Catalogue of British Mosses and Hepatics, of which the present 
work is an enlarged edition. Towards the end of his note he writes 
British Isles Catalogue." Surely the old and tried form will commend 
itself to most people. 
