124 
R. A. PRYOR-HERTFORDSHIRE CARICES. 
growth nor the synonyms can he relied on. In his * English 
Botany,’ Ho. 1295,* published in the same year as, and probably 
immediately after, the issue of his Latin Elora, Smith has further 
noticed that “some erroneous specimens led the accurate Dr. 
Goodenough to reduce this ( C. fulva ) to a variety of C. flava , but 
we have traced the cause of this mistake.” I have been unable to 
learn anything of the authority for this statement, which would 
imply yet another change of opinion on the part of the original 
describer. It is not easy to accept Smith’s solution of the difficulty, 
as his remarks are in apparent conflict with the earlier as well as 
the later views of Goodenough, nor is it certain that his own 
judgment was always consistent with itself. It is difficult to see 
how the same species can be “scarcely removed from C. flava,” 
and yet not only “ very distinct from it,” but “more allied” to 
C. distans. Hor has an examination of contemporary herbaria 
served to throw much light on the points in question. 
In the first place, it is remarkable that there should be no 
British specimens of this controverted sedge among Sir J. Smith’s 
own plants. A sheet marked “ flava” from Teesdale has at some 
subsequent period (not by Smith) been placed among the “ fulvce,” 
with a query; no doubt, however, can, I think, attach to the 
correctness of the original name. There are three sheets marked 
“ speirostachya,” including the original specimens from David Don ; 
and one labelled “ C. fulva diversissima a flava ” ; the only British 
examples from “Aberdeen, Prof. Beattie, 1799,” and “Scotland, 
Mr. Mackay, 1796, ” have been altered by Dr. Boott f to speiro- 
stachya , an identification in which I have no doubt (if it is 
necessary to say so) that he was correct; they are quite indis¬ 
tinguishable from those on the former sheets. Thus C. Horn- 
schuchiana (speirostachya ) seems to have completely absorbed the 
reconstituted fulva of Smith, and it must be remembered that he 
became acquainted with the former as a native of Britain but a 
short time before his death. A plant in Budge’s herbarium 
labelled “ C. fulva, a C. flava distinctissima,” and collected in 
Anglesea by Dawson Turner, who might have been supposed to 
have known Smith’s species, is undoubtedly C. distans. Winch’s 
specimens in the possession of the Linnean Society, as well as 
some others derived from the same source in Sowerby’s herbarium, 
are mostly C. Sornschucliiana,\ while of the Shropshire examples in 
the latter collection, from Sir James Smith himself, and stated by 
him on the ticket to differ “from flava abundantly, particularly 
* The figure in ‘ English Botany ’ has usually been quoted with some degree of 
hesitation, and it is uncertain whether it was actually drawn from Shropshire 
specimens. It is worth remarking that the roughness of the beak of the 
perigynium which is so conspicuous in the original engraving, and of which 
Smith has noted on the drawing itself, “ roughness right, very important,” has 
been entirely omitted in the revised plate of Syme. 
t Boott MS. in sched. “The specimens in his (Smith’s) herbarium from 
Beattie, which he quotes under his C. fulva , have the orifice of the perigynium 
distinctly membranous.”—Boott, ‘ Illustr. Cares,’ pt. iv, p. 138. 
X The same may be said of E. Forster’s in hb. Brit. Mas. 
