76 
NATURE NOTES 
arrangement of the genera has been omitted, while the useful chapter explaining 
the terms used in the descriptive portion of the book has been much enlarged. 
Those, however, who still prefer to count the stamens and styles will find the 
sexual system at the end of the book, where it occupies a few pages in the form of 
an index. 
A mark of up-to-dateness is the replacing of certain well-knowm names by 
strange ones, in accordance with the law of priority of publication. It is 
dangerous to condemn adhesion to rules, but one views with mixed feelings the 
appearance of these unfamiliar names in a popular work on British plants. The 
mischief is that they are so often fugacious, the recognition of some ancient 
book or an alteration of the limits of some other genus necessitating a second 
change. Where alterations have been made the more familiar name should also 
have been quoted. We think too that the authorities for the names should have 
been given, though unfortunatel}' in the present unsatisfactory state of botanic 
nomenclature an author may never have seen the plant for the present name of 
which he has made himself responsible. 
The amateur student who has the courage to attack sedges and grassed will 
be glad to find these two last families of the seed plants now included in the 
volume, though we fear he will not get get much help from some of the figures, 
which, especially in the genus Carex, are very poor. Perhaps in a later edition 
the publishers may be persuaded to replace some of the old and much w'orn 
blocks. We make these various suggestions because we think their adoption in a 
future edition would increase the value of this very valuable little book. 
A. B. Rendle. 
Missouri Botanical Garden. Eleventh Annual Report. St. Louis, Mo., U.S.A., 
1900. 
This volume is even more sumptuous than its predecessors. Fifty-eight 
plates, four of them coloured, and over 150 pp. of letterpress, mostly of a strictly 
botanical character, form a worthy testimony to the value of endowment of 
research — at least in St. Louis. The chief papers are on the diseases known as 
“peckiness” and “pin-rot” in Taxodiiim and Libocedrus respectively, on 
Agaves, on American species of Euphorbia of the section Tithymalus, with 42 
plates, and on Lophotocarpus and Sagittaria. 
The Classification of Botafiical Publications. By William Trelease. (Reprinted 
from Science for November 17, 1899.) 
This paper deals with the cataloguing of botanical works on the decimal 
system, and should prove helpfully suggestive to librarians. 
Received : — Board of Agriculture : Leaflet No. 62. The Pear and Cherry 
.Sawfly (Eriocampa limacina, Cameron). The Victorian Naturalist for January ; 
Knowledge, Science-Gossip, The Naturalist, The Irish Naturalist, Humanity, 
The Animals' Friend, Animal World, Our Animal Friends and Agricultural 
Economist for March. 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES AND QUERIES. 
Polecats or Fitchets. — I should feel obliged if any readers can say 
whether these animals have become extinct in Worcestershire, Warwickshire, or 
other counties ? They used to be met with here fifty years ago occasionally. I 
met with an animal’s mark in the snow a month ago that I was not sure about : it 
might have been a squirrel’s, but I think it was a polecat’s. I reckon to know 
every animal’s mark I meet with — foxes, badgers, dogs of various sizes, cats, 
hedgehogs, stoats, weasels, hares, rabbits, rats, mice (various), squirrels, and 
