235 



WESTMORLAND AND ITS NATURAL HISTORY. 



The Westmorland Note-Book and Natural History Record. A quarterly 

 magazine, in two divisions. Demy 8vo., 3s. per annum. London : Elliott 

 Stock. Kendal : E. Gill. Part I, March 1888. Part II, June 1888. 



Although this new serial, combining Natural History with notes 

 on local Archaeology, Dialect, and Folk-lore, might be thought, with 

 some warrant, to trench upon the province of The Naturalist as the 

 organ of record for the eleven northern counties of England, we have, 

 nevertheless, nothing but commendation for the actual performance 

 of the natural history work in the two first parts before us. Agreeably 

 unusual, both in the inception and the reahsation, the projectors 

 appear to have been far-sighted and felicitous ; they have had clearly 

 before them at start what was wanted, and that want they have com- 

 menced to supply with care and perspicuity. 



Each part of the Note-book is divided into two sections — paged 

 separately — with the hindmost of which, the Natural History Record, 

 we are, of course, only concerned. It fills some fifty clearly-printed 

 pages, embellished by a judicious use of thick-letter type for species- 

 names, in the two parts ; and is edited by Mr. J. A. Martindale, 

 whose name is a quite sufficient guarantee that precision of statement 

 and scrupulous accuracy in matters of detail, will be preferred to that 

 more showy copiousness which is so often, alas ! the vitiating factor 

 in natural history lucubration. The papers are somewhat fragmentary 

 (e.g., the isolated, tentative or rather provisional 'List of Sedges,' 

 which might have been made fuller for District 6 at least by easy 

 references) as must needs be where the raison d'etre of the whole 

 endeavour is ' to work out in full ' what is far from thoroughly known 

 at present ; but each paper is, after all, a genuine instahnent — ^a stone 

 of known weight and proportion added to the cairn that shall some 

 day by such additions become a lasting monument to the labours of 

 the early workers. The first paper is, appropriately, ' Our District,' in 

 which the editor briefly sketches its salient features, and it is accom- 

 panied by a map (on a sufticient scale, 4 miles to the inch) of the 

 Watsonian coaiital area 69, that is to say, Westmorland with that 

 detached portion of Lancashire known as Furness, which — drained 

 by the Leven, Crake, and Duddon — is phyto-geographically one with 

 it. This map is a good one, showing with commendable clearness 

 the six very unequal river-basin districts into which the area is divisible. 

 The limitations of the Tees district as regards the Troutbeck tributary 

 seem not to he quite accurately indicated by the coloured area, but 

 this is the only sliortcoming a[)parent. 



An instalment of a List of the Larger Kendal b'ungi (by Rev. C. H. 

 Waddell), enumerating 138 species down to Dacrymyces ; a List of 



Aug. 1888. 



