Lees: British and Alien Plant-Lists. 313 



in a score collectors will have the contrasted characters acces- 

 sible. The need of a new and ampler descriptive Flora is thus 

 apparent ; to say nothing about the ' newer ' species, splits or 

 discovered since 1850, which the Oxford and the London Lists 

 furnish names of. 



As to the three catalogues themselves, and their merits. 

 In its simple way, and at the under-cost price of Foiirpence, the 

 List of British Seed-Plants and Ferns with its Corrigendal 

 leaflet of December 1907 is useful because (i) it gives the various 

 dates at which the species were first described from Linnaeus's 

 Species Plantanim 1753, down to 1888 {Cephalanthera longifolia, 

 Fritsch) or 1889 (Potamogeton varians, Morong ex Fryer), or a 

 little later, so that it is fairly ' up-to-date,' and enables one to 

 form a clear idea of the real or false stability of the growth- 

 detail on which ' Character ' rests ; and (2) because it correlates 

 with its prior-established names those adopted by Hooker, 

 Bentham and Groves, in their respective works of 1884, 1892, 

 and 1904. Some disadvantage will, however, be keenly felt 

 by students of our ' critical ' genera on the move, Brambles, Roses, 

 Hawkweeds and Willows, who are practically fobbed off by 

 advice to consult ' monographs ' as to the first three, whilst 

 revisionary almagests dealing with Willows and Pondweeds are 

 non-existent. That Dr. Rendle has been bold enough to 

 ' cut the painter,' and let drift the Sarnian species ' which have 

 no claim to be considered as belonging to the British Flora,' 

 matters almost less than the ruthless barring out of Aliens ' on 

 the make ' within our National ' marches,' but (since happily 

 few) to exclude ' plants formerly found in Britain hut now 

 extinct ' is indefensible, since we can neither be quite certain 

 as to the one fact, nor predicate with any confidence the other. 

 Still, viewed as a whole, within its limitations, the Seed-Plant 

 List of the British Museum Trustees fills its place in the ranks 

 with the efficiency of a well-drilled private : one likes the look 

 of its clear-lined countenance. The monumental, unique 

 Index Kewensis (1885-95) has already been back-passed in that 

 race to the rear, to where straining men would find the palaeo- 

 fossil names of ^the botanic Adams. Several I. K. names have 

 been superseded by unfamiliars (Crepis capillaris replaces 

 C. virens, for example, and Sir Joseph Banks's Leontodon 

 nudicaulis supplants Linnean and L K. hirtus) for the disease 

 of resurrectionitis was not stamped out even by that learned 

 and laborious Jacksonation of Botanography, incepted by ' the 



1908 August I. 



