The Scottish Naturalist. 



233 



SECOND REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE, consisting of Mr. 

 A. W. Wills (Chairman), Mr. E. W. Badger, and Professor 

 Hillhouse, for the purpose of collecting information as to 

 the Disappearance of Native plants from their Local Habitats. 

 By Professor Hillhouse, Secretary. (Published in the 

 Journal of Botany in December, 1889.) 



Reviewed by James \V. H. Trail, A.M., M.D., F.L.S. 



The meeting of the British Association at Newcastle in 1889 will 

 be memorable in the annals of British botany as that at which 

 appeared the first (though nominally the second) of what ought to 

 prove a series of reports of great interest and ever-increasing value, 

 as historical documents fitted to throw much light on several of 

 the more obscure problems of plant distribution in our islands, 

 and upon the history of the effects produced upon a flora by the 

 changed conditions and agencies incident to the progress of 

 civilization. It may be that through the information thus stored 

 up light will also be thrown on some of the problems at present 

 exercising the minds of evolutionists. 



Nor should a more direct benefit be overlooked in the service 

 that such reports are likely to perform by directing attention, in 

 the case of rare plants, to the danger of their extirpation through 

 carlessness of landowners, or through rapacity on the part of 

 collectors, whether so called botanists eager to collect numerous 

 duplicates, or certain nurserymen or local guides, aiming at gain by 

 the sale of living plants of species in peculiar demand as rare or 

 local. 



For these and other reasons all botanists must cordially 

 sympathise with the objects that the British Association seeks to 

 promote through its committee ; and all must desire to assist in 

 rendering the annual reports as instructive and accurate in every 

 way as it is possible to make them. A careful analysis of this first 

 report may help to indicate in what respects the same lines should 

 be followed in future, and in what they are open to alteration with 

 advantage. 



Dealing exclusively as the report does with Scotch plants, it 

 seems not unfitting that it should be critically examined in this 

 journal, devoted in part to the promotion of the study of the 

 Scotch flora. 



