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BOTANY Surrey, at Edlesborough and Ellesborough in Bucks, etc., but which in most of its habitats in Britain is certainly an introduced shrub. A specially interesting species is the grass Phleum phalaroides, which at one time was wrongly called P. Boehmeri, and has a peculiarly restricted area in Britain in the counties of Beds, Herts, Essex, Cambridge and Suffolk. The beautiful pasque flower [Anemone Pulsatilla) still occurs in the locality given by Abbot, on Barton Hills, with the mountain cat's-foot [Antennaria dioica),& very rare species in the southern midlands, although known in Northants, Oxfordshire, etc. A rare species of charad, Nitella mucronata, was found by Mr. C. Davis in 1882 in the Ouse. BOTANOLOGIA As will be gathered from the foregoing notes the foundation of Bedfordshire botany was laid by the Rev. Charles Abbot, D.D., who was born probably at Winchester about 1761, and was vicar of Oakley Raynes and Goldington, Beds. He was elected a fellow of the Linnsan Society in 1793 and in 1798 published the Flora of Bedfordiensis. He became D.D. Oxon in 1802. His herbarium is still preserved at Turvey Abbey, and has been critically examined by Mr. R. A. Pryor, B.A., F.L.S. (the author of the Flora of Herts), who published some interest- ing details respecting it in the Journal of Botany, x. (1881) 40 et seq. ; and Mr. E. M. Holmes, F.L.S.,has also reported on the lichens and alga?. Dr. Abbot was a frequent correspondent of Sir James E. Smith, to whom he sent many specimens, several of which are figured and described in English Botany. He also noticed Asarum europceum in the Thames valley. The Flora Bedfordiensis included not only the flowering plants and the higher cryptogams, but also the mosses, liverworts, lichens, alga? and fungi ; though, owing to changes already alluded to, many species are no longer to be found in the stations mentioned by Abbot, and some are, it is to be feared, no longer existing in the county. These missing species include the fen orchis [Malaxis paludosa), a tiny plant which once grew on the sphagnum bogs at Potton, the cranberry [Vaccinium Oxycoccos or Oxycoccos quadripetala), the petty whin [Genista anglica), the Lancashire asphodel [Narthecium ossifragum), which grows at Brickhill just outside our area, the black bog rush [Schaenus nigricans), the white beaked bog rush [Rynchospora alba), the deer's club- rush [Scirpus ccespitosus), the marsh St. John's wort [Hypericum elodes), the marsh fern [Lastrea or Dryopteris T'helypteris), the horse-tail [Equise- tum byemale) and the flea bane [Pulicaria vulgaris) ; and the extinction or diminution of these may all be attributed to drainage or cultivation. Among others which cultivation has either extirpated or rendered much more rare, are the maiden pink [Diantbus deltoides), the cress [Draba muralis), the star thistle [Centaurea Calcitrapa) and the grass Glyceria distans ; the latter Abbot called Poa retroflexa. The misnomers in Abbot's Flora 1 include Spergula pentandra, by which probably a form 1 See papers in Journal of Botany (1881), pp. 40-6, 66-73. i 41 6