Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/353

BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 327 coloured; " it is charitable to suppose that the reviewer is afflicted with Daltonism. The introduction of all the lowland plants of Switzerland into a book called " The Flora of the Alps," seems to us a mistake : no one wants them, and they add to the bulk of the work. But they afford an opportunity for the introduction of a few more of the wretched figures from Mr. Wooster's book — e. g. the hideous mon- strosity of Fritillaria Meleagris already referred to. By the way, what does Mr. Bennett mean by describing the flowers of this as " yellow or variegated with purple " ? He must have forgotten his Matthew Arnold — " I know what white, what purple fritillaries The grassy harvest of the river fields Above by Eynsham, down by Sandford, yields." The best part of the book, next to its get-up, is the brief but interesting introduction. There is a short glossary, an index of genera, and one of English names, among which we are surprised to find " Moon-flower " assigned to Lunaria rediviva. But it is impossible to recommend those who are planning a holiday in Switzerland to add these volumes to their impedimenta. BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, dc. Mr. I. H. BuRKiLL publishes in vol. ix. of the Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society (Feb. 10, 1896) an enumeration of a small collection of plants from New Britain, collected by Baron A. von Hiigel in 1875. One new species, Eranthemum Huegelii, is described, and a new name, Alpinia oceanica, is proposed for a plant of complicated synonymy. We reproduce on p. 320 Mr. Burkill's note on this species. Mr. John C. Willis is leaving England for Peradenya, where he will assist Dr. Trimen, and ultimately succeed him in the direc- tion of the Gardens, from which Dr. Trimen will shortly retire. The Messrs. Linton have distributed the first fascicle of their " Set of British Hieracia," which should be very helpful to students of this critical genus. It contains twenty-five '* species," fourteen of which, so far as is known, are endemic, " though some of them have affinities with Scandinavian types." The distributors say, in the note which accompanies the specimens : "Objection has been made to the use of the term ' species ' in connection with the members of this genus, and, perhaps, the grouping of allied forms together as subspecies under an aggregate {sp. collectiva), may be the best solution of the difficulty; following the course in some other groups which has been adopted with H. murorum in the London Catalogue. But it must be borne in mind that experiment abundantly shows that these allied forms usually have their differentia brought out more distinctly in cultivation ; and that in all the numerous cases tried, the forms or species come true from