7G 
THE .TOUKNAL OF BOTANY 
decide which are to be accepted as central or leading forms in every 
group. One cannot help feeling that here at least logic and cold 
intellect have done their best. 
And yet, on closer study, doubts persistently recur. The numerous 
misprints, though a disfigurement, are perhaps inevitable. But the 
drawings!—no living bramble ever looked so neat and perfect in 
arrangement. The ring of stamens, all absolutely on a level ; the 
tidy sepals all exactly in place; the whole look of it is not that of a 
living thing. The pictures would do well for a stained-glass window : 
they are artistic, but in spite of accuracy of detail, they are not 
scientific. 
Again, the diligence and the logic seem to be more than a little 
misplaced. Students of brambles are constantly reminding us that 
the subject can only be properly studied in the living plant; and the 
fact that Sudre depends wholly on exsiccata for our British forms at 
once makes one extremely shy of taking his view in preference to 
Focke’s, for the latter has seen a very large proportion of our forms 
in the life. Sudre’s circumstances may have prevented him from 
travelling outside France—at any rate, he does not appear to have 
done so ; and the fact at once makes one doubtful of many of his 
conclusions. 
Again, as I have gone through the book page by page, I have 
almost come to the conviction that he has often described new forms 
from a single dried specimen. This, of course, I cannot prove ; but 
the suggestion is almost overwhelming; and how unsafe the pro¬ 
cedure is, even elementary study shows. I am sure that I could 
present him with specimens taken from one bush in different years to 
which he would give different names. I should therefore venture 
seriously to doubt whether he is justified in saying that a given sheet 
published in the British Kubi contained more forms than one. 
And, again, there are clear cases where he describes as a distinct 
variety— e. g., var. laxus —what is only a shade-grown specimen. 
And, above all, Sudre is far too ready to assign, without hesitation, a 
definite hybrid origin to distinct forms. The results produced are 
sometimes amusing: e. g., H. raduloides Bog. is, in Sudre’s opinion, 
echinatoides x apiculatus (i. e., angloscixonicus), regardless of the 
fact that it grows, e.g. here in N. Oxfordshire, in fine typical form, 
in spots where neither of its parents is known. Marsh alii, again, 
is j Babingtonii xfusco-ater, though very good Marshalli occurs in 
counties where neither of the latter exists. In the many cases where 
he has seen probable hybrids growing in France, and so records them, 
he is on far safer ground. 
On comparing his results with Focke’s (published in 1914), and 
especially his view r s of British plants, one cannot help feeling that 
Sudre’s suffer not only because he has not seen our plants in 
the living state, but because his mind is mediaeval. He has tried 
completely to reduce the subtleties of nature to paper classification. 
Every variation merits a description and receives a name (of course, 
this is true only so far as his materials go). And it will not work. 
Focke admits that it is impossible yet to get at the complete 
harmony which will include both his work and Sudre’s; there is not 
