Lees: British (i)ia Alien Plaiit-Lists. 



munificence ' of C. Darwin and ' the ]M-ofound knowledge and 

 critical acumen ' of Sir Joseph Hooker. Like some e])ideniic 

 it crudesces in spots at times almost — parody without pro- 

 fanity — as if to the hortosiccan mind of the affected ' a flower's 

 crown of flower's to have borne an elder name.' Yet, as I began 

 by saving Bellis perennis is Bellis perennis still ; not so, how- 

 ever, alas! Peter Bell's and Beaconsfield's primrose ' by the 

 river's brim.' for over that this nice battle of flowers has raged 

 by permit of a certain dubiety ; the Seed-List at first setting 

 it down as ' Primula acaulis, Linn Flora Anglica, 12, (1754) ' 

 and then in corrigenda correcth^ as P. ' vulgaris Hudson ' on 

 faith of ' Flora Anglica, 70 (1762).' with which both Oxford 

 List and Loudon Catalogue loth Ed., agree. The fact is, I 

 believe, that Linnaeus adopted the name ' acaidis,' either from 

 Hill who in 1756 so called the prevailing sessile-pedicelled 

 form of primrose ; or from Jacquin ; publishing it as an integer 

 in Flora Anglica, in Amoenitates Academicce, vol. iv., 97. The 

 first volume of these Transactions was issued in 1749, the 

 fourth in November 1759. ' Var acaulis' Hill, or 'species' 

 Linn, therefore remains only as the title of a var. or portion 

 of ' English Primrose ' growth ; and the less frequent polyanthus- 

 stemmed umbellate-flowering state has to be accorded its 

 particular earliest name, as such, viz : caidescens, Koch, [circa 

 1S41 or 2). In this skirmish Hudson conquers — if one may 

 put it so — in that of his pretty erection Ficaria verna (1762), 

 despite a difference betw^een that and the rest of Ranunculus, 

 both Linnean title and genus being the elder by a decade 

 nearly, remain in statu quo ; and Hudson's apt specialization is 

 relegated to the lumber-room of antiques not antique enough ! 



Now as to the London Catalogue, loth edition (Geo. Bell & 

 Sons, 48 pages, 9d. ; cl. interleaved, is. 3d.), drawn up by Mr. 

 W. A.Clarke with the co-operation of several specialists who have 

 revised and studied certain genera, w^hat, in its 2075 numbered 

 names is given is ' good ' distinctly, but it does not give enough 

 to satisfy botanic appetite. Who are avid of information it 

 irritates by a bald -laconi city and dogmatism, since there is not 

 even that alternative sort of compromise which marked the 

 unlucky ' nine ' [Edn.] of 1895, out of the complexities and 

 ' complicities ' of which, as in most matters of clature and 

 census, the hungry, but fastidious critic (and there are suck 

 freaks) can pick up something. The first, oldest name is not 

 necessarily the most felicitously descriptive.. If a species is 



Natural ist^ 



