208 
THE JOURNAL OE BOTANY 
The second volume of Mr. Kidley’s Flora of the Malay Penin¬ 
sula, which has recently been issued, contains the Gamopetahe. Of 
the species included, the author has seen the greater number in a 
living state—a considerable proportion have been collected bv him 
onlv—a fact which is unusual in colonial floras. The number of 
endemics is very large, especially in Gesneracece , where 52 out of 56 
species of Didymocarpus and 15 out of 16 of Didissandra are 
endemic. 
Under the title Allgemeine AbstammungsleJire “ zugleich eine 
gemeinverstandliclie Kritik des Darwinismus und des Lamarckismus ” 
(Berlin, Borntraeger), Dr. Bernhard Diirken attempts to compress 
into 200 pages an account, adapted for the general reader, of the 
present position of the Evolution theory. About one-half of the 
book consists in a recapitulation of the familiar arguments for the 
theory of Descent; the remainder is occupied with an exposition and 
criticism of the Lamarckian and Darwinian interpretations. The con¬ 
clusion is that, while the fact of Evolution is clear, no adequate 
explanation of it has yet been given; Darwinism is “ ein grosser 
Irrtum” and Lamarckism is little better. Throughout the book most 
of the illustrative examples are taken from the animal kingdom, and 
some aspects of the subject especially interesting to botanists are 
only lightly touched on. To English readers, at any rate, many of 
the criticisms of the Natural Selection theory will seem somewhat 
antiquated, but their revival may be of use if it leads readers 
to turn to the Origin of Species to see how they were met by 
Darwin. 
At the sale of Mr. Graham’s Library at Sotheby’s on May 28, one 
of'the twelve copies printed of Lord Bute’s Botanical Tables (1785) 
was acquired by Messrs. Wheldon & Wesley for £55. An account of 
the work and of the copy in the Department of Botany will be found 
in this Journal for 1916, p. 84. 
Mr. Martinets Nijhoff, of the Hague, has issued an interesting 
Catalogue (No. 487) of books of the 15th and 16th centuries, with a 
supplement containing books on the bibliography and typography of 
the same period. 
The account of the Lichens collected during the British Antarctic 
(‘Terra Nova’) Expedition, 1910, by Prof. 0. V. Darbishire, has 
been issued (March 24) by the Trustees of the British Museum (7 s.). 
It contains a complete list of the Lichens brought back by the various 
Antarctic expeditions, and includes descriptions and figures of eight 
species new to science, all save one belonging to Buellia, of which 
Ferns another new species was figured and described in this Journal 
for April (p. 106). 
In Botanisl'a Notiser no. 3, Dr. J. Hendriksson publishes a 
supplement to his paper on Corylus Avellana (Bot. Not. 1915, 236), 
in which several new varieties are described and figured. 
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