FltEDEIUC NEWTON WILLIAMS 
251 
“ the individual manner characteristic of Mr. Williams’s work, which, 
while adding to its interest, renders it difficult to discover the general 
principles on which he proceeds .... In matters of arrangement, 
nomenclature, spelling, and other details, the course adopted is not 
that pursued by most botanists and does not, we think, tend to 
convenience: his notes on the species are however always extremely 
interesting, and show an amount of literary and historical research 
which no similar work presents.” The Prodromus shows, as indeed 
do all Williams’s papers, an astonishing acquaintance with botanical 
literature, the historical aspect of which especially appealed to him ; 
the account of the British records for each species is remarkably full. 
The publication of the existing portion of the Prodromus was 
assisted by a grant from the lioyal Society ; the MS. of the remainder, 
save for one or two lacunae, is complete. The question of expense 
alone would be sufficient to render it unlikelv that this will ever 
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be printed; but I am glad to say that it will be offered to the 
Department of Botany, where it will be accessible for consultation. 
Whatever may be thought of its usefulness, the Prodromus may be 
regarded as a tour de force as the work of one man, and will remain 
as a permanent testimony to the thoroughness of the author’s work. 
The studies of individual British plants published by Williams in 
this Journal include Antennaria dioica var. byperborea (1901,217) ; 
^Ranunculus aquatilis (1908, 11, 44) ; Carex canescens (id. 369) ; 
Viola tricolor var. sabulosa (1911, 341) ; in each of these is given 
the full synonymy of ancient and recent authors and an examination 
of the specimens contained in the British Museum and Kew herbaria, 
to both of which Williams was a frequent visitor; in the Journal for 
1902 are several contributions dealing with Hieracia , and in 1904 
(253) is a paper dealing with “ Veronica Buxbaumii as a British 
Colonist.” He had intended to publish a new Flora of Middlesex, 
excluding that portion which is now in the County of London ; and 
in this he had made considerable progress. In 1895 Williams printed 
privately a “ Provisional and Tentative List of the Orders and Families 
of British Flowering Plants,” of which a second edition appeared in 
1898; a note in the Journal for 1918 (p. 256), supplied by himself, 
gives details of a “ new Catalogue of British Plants to be published 
after the end of the War ” ; this was to form a systematic index to 
the Prodromus. He also contributed to the Journal various short 
notes and reviews; among the latter is a long notice of the twelfth 
edition of Babington’s Manual (1904, 271), the tone of which elicited 
(p. 352) a protest from its editors, the Messrs. Groves. 
Among Williams’s other contributions to the Journal may be 
noted those on llheum (1891, 292), Ianthe (Hyp ox idacece \ 1901, 
289), Zygostigma (Gentianacece ; 1903, 232); Clarkella ( Rubiacea j \ 
1906, 377), and Aster sedifolius and its varieties (1905, 708) ; the 
disconnectedness of these studies was characteristic of Williams, who 
in botany as in other matters was curiously erratic ; his absence of 
system was noted by Mr. J. G. Baker in his review of The Pinks of 
Central Europe as long ago as 1891 (Journ. Bot. 26). He was 
deeply interested in problems of heredity, as may be seen from his 
