REVIEWS. 
28 
Both these varieties have been compared with specimens received 
from the late H. C. Watson with which they agree truly, but the var. 
lepidocarpa of all the districts recorded by myself would be included 
under C.Jiava var. minor (Townsend, Journ. Bot., x, 163, June, 1881). 
C. hirta, Linn. Hammer Sedge. 
Native : In meadows and damp places, Locally abundant. May 
to July. 
I. Stew at Edgbaston, With., ed. 7 ; Sutton Park ; Middleton Heath ; 
roadsides near Colesliill; Cornel’s End; Bradnock’s Marsh ; 
Henfield ; Knowle ; Solihull; Packwood. 
II. Honily, II. B.; Honington ; Tredington, Neivb.; Alveston Heath ; 
Binton Bridges ; Drayton Bushes ; Chesterton Mill Pool; Sowe 
Waste Canal; Brinklow ; Brandon ; canal near Newbold-on- 
Avon ; Combe Pastures ; Ansty, near Coventry, Ac. 
(To be continued.) 
A Short Hand-book of Natural History. Chester. 1884. 
This pamphlet, which is published by the Chester Society of Natural 
Science, for use at the Annual Conversaziones and other meetings of 
the Society, contains a very good but brief account of the two biological 
kingdoms, a few words at the end being devoted to the mineral king¬ 
dom, the polariscope, and the spectroscope. It seems to be founded 
upon that published in 1882 by the Birmingham Natural History 
and Microscopical Society, but has been greatly enlarged and 
improved. 
The authors state that they have adopted the classification which 
they deemed most likely to be known. But that with which they 
begin the Vegetable Kingdom (p. 4) viz., the arangement of the Fungi 
and Algae in two parallel series (due to Sachs), while it scarcely seems 
to fulfil the condition which they impose, has lately suffered a curious 
fate. The philosophers of that happy land across the Rhine, who so 
obligingly furnish us with new classifications ad infinitum at frequent 
internals, have now thrown it overboard again, even its author con¬ 
curring in its rejection. It is at present a high crime and mis¬ 
demeanour in the centres of English biological (at any rate, botanical) 
teaching, to venture to differ from the latest G-erman authorities on 
any point, the only difficulty being to make oneself quite sure which 
is the latest. This classification of the two allied groups will there¬ 
fore now probably disappear from our books—a fate much to be 
regretted, because it has a good deal to recommend it, although one 
class, the “ Carposporese,” is about the most heterogeneous group 
of forms that the perverted ingenuity of a systematist ever within 
recent times brought together. 
It is much to be wished that our writers would give up the 
mistaken application of the name Torula (p. 4) to the common yeast 
and various yeast-like forms. Torula is in the eyes of the mycologist 
a well-marked genus belonging to a widely different group. The 
