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THE BRITISH NATURALIST. 



fasciculi of convenient form, and which will include dried specimens of 

 the lichens indigenous to the counties of Cumberland, Durham, and 

 Northumberland. These counties — especially Cumberland — are rich 

 in a well-developed lichen flora, which has not hitherto been 

 specifically studied, nor representatively set forth in any Herbaria. 

 The Herbarium will be based on the new and excellent " Monograph 

 of British Lichens," by the Rev. J. M. Crombie, M.A., which is well 

 illustrated with a series of micro drawings, and the first part of which 

 has only recently been issued by the Trustees of the British Museum. 

 The utility and value of such an Herbarium cannot be over-estimated, 

 and such an opportunity as the present one should be embraced by all 

 those interested in the study of lichen flora. No doubt up to the pre- 

 sent time great difficulty in obtaining reliable specimens has been 

 experienced, but the present occasion removes this obstacle, and there 

 cannot now be any excuse for the lichen flora being unrepresented in 

 public herbaria. It is to be anticipated the issue of these fasciculi will 

 increase the number of students of these obscure plants, and excite a 

 greater interest than has hitherto been shown in the development of 

 these lowly organisms of plant life. It is scarcely necessary to add that 

 the issue will be limited, and we wish the compiler the success his 

 undertaking deserves. 



REVIEW. 



" Random Recollections of Woodland, Fen, and Hill,"' by J. W. Tutt, 

 F.E.S. Lond. : Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 3s., pp. 1-183 ; also from the Author, 

 Rayleigh Villa, Westcombe Hill, S.E. — In this series of nine interesting articles, Mr. 

 Tutt has provided his readers — and they deserve to be numerous — with much natural 

 history information, in a pleasant and readable form. Though largely, it is by no 

 means exclusively, entomological ; and it is evident that the author's sympathies 

 with and knowledge of living creatures are by no means restricted to the class in 

 connection with which his most useful scientific work has been done. To the rising 

 generation of naturalists, and to the still larger class, who, without undertaking any 

 special work, feel a real though it may be somewhat indefinite interest in natural 

 history, we can recommend Mr. Tutt's book as well worth perusal; we say this the 

 more readily, because it is the work of one who is not on the one hand a mere 

 collector or on the other a mere arm chair theorizer, but who has a wide knowledge 



I both of the practical work and of the literary and philosophical aspects of natural 

 history, and because we cannot blind ourselves to certain blemishes which we hope 

 may disappear from a subsequent edition. The style of the articles is on the whole 

 so good, that we regret to see it marred by even one or two offences against good 

 taste; the word "pub" is used several times, presumably for inn, in the article on 

 "One of the Will-o'-the-Wisps of Fenland," and is an offence to the eye, whilst the 

 pedagogic style into which the author occasionally drops is peculiarly irritating. A 

 tendency to personify Nature, who is referred to as the Great Mother, will elicit a 

 grim smile from anyone who has thought much about the facts which may fairly be 

 described as dysteleulogical , and which suggest rather the typical Step-Mother, 

 whether with or without capitals. Both on pp. 113 and 117 this tendency is curiously 



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