BOOK NOTICES. 



was not made to take in the great Triassic Carlisle plain and the eastern slope 

 ( west Pennine face) of the vale of the Eden, since Viola areiiaria and some other 

 plants are thereby excluded, and plant stations which are connecting links in the 

 chain of distribution between the Cumbrian and the Yorkshire hills remain of 

 necessity unindicated. True, these were dealt with in a paper by the same author 

 ' On the Dispersion of Montane Plants over the North of England,' in the Journal 

 of Botany for 1871 ; and, probably, a trustworthy tourist's flora of 'the Lakes,' 

 albeit awkwardly situated in conterminous parts of three counties, was more likely 

 (from a publisher's point of view) to command a remunerative sale than a county 

 flora upon strictly scientific lines. 



We are told (p. 5) that ' one of the principal characteristics of the Lake district,' 

 climato-botanically, ' is that, broadly speaking, cultivation does not reach up to the 

 top of the super-agrarian, but only to the top of the mid-agrarian zone ii.e.^ only 

 to 900 feet alt.), and that consequently at the Lakes the highest localities of a 

 crowd of plants that follow in the footsteps of man are a whole zone or half a zone 

 below their proper climatic limits, and the super-agrarian flora at the Lakes is 

 materially smaller than in the eastern counties.' The foregoing, with the additional 

 statements that the average annual temperature of this super-agrarian zone (900 to 

 1800 feet on the hill sides) 'may be estimated at 42° to 45° Fahr., and its 

 tipper limit marked botanically by the cessation of Pteris, Digitalis, Erica, 

 Parnassia, and Pingiiiaila,^ make up almost the only generalisation with which 

 students are favoured. 



Hardly any slips, or omission to take note of published records, are discoverable. 

 In the N'aturalist (vol. iv., p. 67) for December 1878 was a paper by the late 

 Rev. R. Wood, naming a century of Cumbrian plants (many of them Aliens) not 

 given for the county in Topographical Botany, Ed. I., most of which appear in this 

 Lakeland flora from other sources. This particular list, however, would seem not 

 to have been referred to at all, since its records for Myosuriis nmii}}ius (Wigton), 

 Ononis spinosa (Westward), Rhinanthns major (Culton, Wigton), Carex disticha 

 (Westward), and Jjinciis maritinms (Kirkbride) are unmentioned, although it is, 

 wisely, part of the plan of the flora to give a line even to those records it rejects as 

 doubtful or certainly erroneous. A Lake-Lancashire locality for Lotus temcis Kit., 

 published eleven years ago, (Report Bot. Loc. Record Club, 1873, P- 'meadow, 

 W. side Humphrey Head, has also been overlooked, other notices in the same 

 series of reports being duly registered. 



A slight seeming inconsistency in the acceptance or rejection of ' species ' for 

 enumeration is here and there observable : e.g., Geum intermedizim is sunk in 

 G. urbamim as being 'a variable hybrid"; Lottis tennis given as a mere variety of 

 L. cornicidatiis : Potainogeton zizii regarded as a variety of heterophylliis instead of 

 the P. lucens to which it is usually referred, whilst, per contra, Stachys ambigua and 

 Salix ambigua, both undoubted hybrids, are, to go no further, given the separate 

 treatment accorded to undoubted ver-species. No doubt these departures are not 

 purely arbitrary, but the explanations obviously do not lie on the surface. 



Regarding Absentees from the district, some strange statements, unaccountable 

 if ultimate search proves them to be fact, are made. Sclerochloa maritima is not 

 known apparently for the salt marsh tracts bordering Morecambe Bay, and, stranger 

 still, there is no record for Sclerochloa distans, on the sandstone or on the Walney 

 sands ! Crepis siiccisifolia, Tausch., is absent, Saginas maritima and ciliata 

 practically ungathered, and Trientalis (spite of Hudson's mention of it as a West- 

 moreland plant) not admitted. It, however, grows near Kirby Stephen. The 

 Stock-ghyll (Ambleside) Pyrola is certainly minor Swartz, in part, at least, although 

 P. media has also occurred there, and it is likewise a Lake-Lancashire plant. 



Myrrhis odorata and Symphytutn offi^cinale are ranked as Denizens only, whilst 

 it is noticeable that not only the Daffodil, but also Polygonat2im multijiortwi (the 

 generally-cultivated Solomon's Seal) and Chives [Allium schcEnoprastcm) are 

 accepted as true Natives in the area under consideration. 



Lastly, it is singularly suggestive to learn that in genera of ^hich the forms 

 or 'species' vary much, such as the Brambles, we get, perhaps (the high alpines 

 apart), a truer glimpse of the kind of influences exerted by the configuration 

 (and resulting climatic and stational variety) of a district than is afforded by the 

 great bulk of vs'ell-marked individual species. Of the 46 Babingtonian Brambles, 



Naturalist, 



