BOOK REVIEWS; 



257 



M British Violets : a Monograph." By Mrs. E. S. Gregory. With 

 an Introduction by G. Claridge Druce, M.A., F.L.S. xxiii + 108 pp., 

 with 34 plates. (\V. Heifer, Cambridge, 1913.) 6s. net. 



At the present day it is naturally but seldom that an indisputably 

 distinct and indigenous species is added to the British flora. There 

 yet remain, however, the many " critical " groups, in most, if not 

 all, of which natural hybridism occurs, whilst in other cases species 

 may be said to be in the making. Opinions are likely 10 vary here 

 as to the grade of various forms, and nomenclature is almost certain 

 to add to the complexity of subjects already naturally complex. 

 A specialist has the opportunity of examining some type specimens, 

 or a Continental botanist visits this country and forms previously 

 misnamed are recognized as well known elsewhere, or as being so far 

 " new " that they are by no means entitled to the names we have 

 been in the habit of giving them. The thorough study of any critical 

 group leads almost invariably — however much hybridism may be 

 recognized — to an increase in the number of species acknowledged 

 as such by the monographer. 



Mr. Druce, in his interesting historical sketch of the genus Viola, 

 attributes four species, apparently V. odorata L., V. Riviniana Reich., 

 V. palustris L., and V. hirta L., to the seventeenth century ; V. canina L. 

 and V. lactea Sm. to the eighteenth ; and V. stagnina Kit., V. armaria 

 D.C., and V. silvestris Lam. to the nineteenth. Mrs. Gregory, who 

 is to be congratulated on this fruit of more than twenty-hve years' 

 study of violets, has, during the present century, added V. wwntana L. 

 and V. epipsila Ledebour to the list. Restricting our attention, 

 as does Mrs. Gregory, to the section Notninium, i.e. excluding V. 

 tricolor L. and its forms, and ignoring sub-species, varieties, forms 

 and probable hybrids, we find Syme, in English Botany, recognizing 

 seven species, Hooker in 1S84 with six, Messrs. Groves, in their edition 

 of Babington's Manual, with eight, and Mrs. Gregory with twelve 

 species. In addition to these " species," however, Mrs. Gregory 

 describes upwards of sixty forms, twenty-seven as varieties, nineteen 

 as forms and sixteen as hybrids. Most of these have been studied 

 under cultivation, and nothing can be better than the way in which 

 they are discussed and described with full synonymy and references 

 to distribution. 



Of the illustrations we prefer Miss Mills's line drawings to the 

 photographs from herbarium specimens ; but we are not sure whether 

 in such a group, where, for instance, considerable importance has 

 been attached to the colour of the spur, coloured illustrations are not 

 essential. 



As to Mrs. Gregory's share of the work, in which she makes the 

 fullest possible acknowledgment of all help received, we can only 

 presume to make two slight objections : first, that on p. xxi the 

 name of the authority for the sectional name would have been better 

 in different type from that in which the name of the section appears ; 

 and, of greater importance, we may, perhaps, ask from the fulness 



vol. xxxix. s 



