Lees : British and Alien Plant-Lists, 



315 



called Stellanthus pinnatifolius (say) , we know something about 

 it besides the order in which it is placed, but if that name has 

 had to give way to Hanhiiryaniim or Ridiculus Mus or something 

 else, some men, who take leave to have sentiments about 

 things, are disheartened, if not disgusted : for example — hasty 

 Hill's ' Radiciila: rooted first, in point of time (1756) but a 

 ' badly defined genus . . excluding . . the Water-cress ' (Druce) 

 will never usurp and replace that of Nasturtium for our saladic 

 olitory, in the mind of the present generation — ' Radicula 

 officinalis. Groves ' academic enough title, has already been 

 torted into the reminding compromise — under the ' Rules ' of 

 the prevailing Medes and Persians in matters botanical, of 

 Radicula Nastiirtiiini aqiiaticiim ; which, if not terse, is telling ! 



Edition Tenth, then, is a bald catalogue, beautifully printed, 

 but a sort of colossal or fossil ' nomen nudum ' itself, fit enough 

 to serve as an ' Exchange ' List — no stick is too green to beat 

 a destructive dog with — exceedingly ' correct,' like to a lay 

 figured well-dressed, and of good form, but with an ' air ' about 

 it as of the last and finished product of botanic civilization that 

 one can do nothing with ; one must either take it or leave it as 

 it is. Already there are rumours — but quite unofficial ones — 

 that concensus of criticism will compel a revised Eleventh at no 

 distant date. Some such ' quick change ' took place once 

 before. And the time-honoured but unnatural sandwiching 

 of the Gymno-spermse (Conifers) bet\\ixt the Cupulifer^e and 

 the Monocotyledons has been continued, whereas in the Druce 

 Oxford List of British Plants, precedent in publication, the 

 Pinaceae correctly and suggestively find place immediately be- 

 fore the Pteridophytes w^hich commence with the cow^-fruited 

 Horsetails ; unless, indeed, the arrangement of the German 

 ' school ' of Engler and Prantl, based upon the Theory of 

 Descent, beginning with the primitive, less complex structure 

 of the reproductive organs, were to be adopted ; as indeed 

 Alexander Irvine tentatively attempted as far back as 1858 

 in his scholarly but rather slipshod and jumblingly constructed 

 Handbook of the British Plants. As the able and original 

 Frederic N. Williams said, in reviewing Lester-Garland's Jersey 

 Flora (1903) ' the pre-evolutionary system associated with the 

 names of Jussieu and De Candolle, was but little less artificial 

 and far less convenient than the so-called sexual system of 

 Linnaeus.' For the rest the London Catalogue, loth Edn., its 

 virtues are those of the single eye, the definite view — synonyms 



1908 August I. 



