I came across it. I was struck with its general aspect, and, being by then familiar with the appearance of our Norfolk trinervis, I quickly examined the nervation of the fruit. I was soon satisfied that I had a form of trinervis Degl. before me, and on comparison with other specimens I found it agreed best with one which Mr. Arthur Bennett had given me of the variety laxa of Lange. Mr. Bennett on seeing the specimen did not feel justified in pronouncing the Irish plant to be Lange's variety. This question is, however, of minor importance: the interesting features of the discovery are, the fact that Ireland has another Carex to add to its list, and that one only lately known for Britain; the westward extension of the geographical area of this species, Oporto being (according to Nyman) the point farthest south and farthest west for which it has hitherto been reported; and an additional link, of no little interest, between the flora of S. and W. of Ireland and the flora of the Spanish Peninsula.-EDWARD F. LINTON.

GLAMORGANSHIRE PLANTS.-The following species, none of which are recorded for Glamorganshire in the last edition of Top. Bot., were observed in that county during last August by Mr. D. Morris, of Kew, Mr. R. V. Sherring, and myself. Some of them were found by Mr. Morris and Mr. Sherring when together; others by Mr. Sherring and myself:-Raphanus maritimus Sm. Very sparingly on a shingly beach at Penclawdd. — Viola Curtisii Forst. Burrows near Kenfig; only in small quantity.-Rubus plicatus W. & N. (name endorsed by Mr. T. R. Archer Briggs). Clive Common, near the Mumbles. R. affinis var. c. cordifolius W. & N. (so named by Mr. J. G. Baker). At and near the Mumbles; apparently rather frequent.-Apium nodiflorum Reichb., var. c. ochreatum DC. (considered such by Mr. Arthur Bennett). Clive Common, near the Mumbles. -Juncus obtusiflorus Ehrh. Oxwich Marsh. - J. acutiflorus Ehrh. Oxwich Marsh.-Scirpus Tabernæmontani Gmel. Oxwich Marsh.-Aira caryophyllea L. Near the Mumbles. Sieglingia decumbens Bernh. Near the Mumbles. The Viola Curtisii from Kenfig appears precisely similar to that which grows so abundantly on some parts of Braunton Burrows, N. Devon. Dr. Boswell, in Eng. Bot., says that V. Curtisii probably occurs on Crumlin Burrows, Glamorganshire, but that he had not seen any specimens from that locality. When I visited the Crumlin Burrows in August last I could not find it there; but I was able to examine a portion only of that extensive tract, in some part of which the plant may very likely still exist. Glamorganshire is noted in the last edition of Top. Bot. as a comital exception for Juncus acutiflorus, Aira caryophyllea, and Sieglingia decumbens; hence the reason for here recording those not uncommon and widely distributed species.DAVID FRY.

ON LEAF-BEARING STIPULES IN POTAMOGETON.- Last summer my friend Mr. Arthur Bennett sent me a root of his Potamogeton Griffithii, which I planted in a large tub, so that its growth might be more carefully watched than it could have been in a pond. soon produced two or three small shoots, which made but little progress; but it was evidently pushing out strong stolons in all

It

directions in the mud in which it grew. In September these stolons sent up several vigorous stems, on each of which the lowest stipule was closely clasping, and furnished on its back with a narrow linear-spathulate coriaceous leaf. This year, when putting a fine series of Potamogeton plantagineus in the press, I was much struck with the resemblance its early state bore to that of P. Griffithii, and was therefore induced to examine my specimens more closely to see if similar adnate stipules were present; I soon found some few examples, but they occur more sparingly than in P. Griffithii. In the latter species they seem to be always present at the base of each shoot. This hurried notice is written to call the attention of observers to this new form of stipule, which is not the exact analogue of that of the pectinatus group. They should be sought for at the base of the stem, as they seem only to be produced immediately above the surface of the mud. Probably they may occasionally occur in other species of Potamogeton, and should be looked for as early in the year as possible, as they soon decay. The collection of early states of all our Pondweeds is well worth the attention of botanists, and they make very beautiful specimens for the herbarium. -ALFRED FRYER.

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

A Flora of Hertfordshire. By the late ALFRED REGINALD PRYOR, B.A., F.L.S. Edited for the Hertfordshire Natural History Society, by Benjamin Daydon Jackson, Sec. L.S.: with an introduction on the Geology, Climate, Botanical History, &c. of the County, by John Hopkinson, F.L.S., F.G.S., and the Editor. London: Gurney and Jackson. 1887. 8vo, pp.

viii. 588.

AFTER a series of delays, unavoidable although regrettable, the posthumous work of the botanist known to the readers of this Journal as "R. A. Pryor," sees the light. Its author died early in 1881; and the task of completing his work, or preparing it for the press, has passed through various hands before it came into those of Mr. Daydon Jackson. who has brought it to a successful issue. It was originally intended that I should edit the work, as Mr. Jackson states in his Preface; but he does not state that this undertaking of mine was contingent on a promise of the late Mr. Newbould to transcribe Mr. Pryor's MS. for the press. It will surprise no one who knew Mr. Newbould's anxious conscientiousness, that this part of the work progressed but slowly; nor was it to be wondered at that the Herts Natural History Society became impatient, and requested, at the end of two years, that the MS. should be returned to them. I was quite prepared to do all that I had promised; and I may further say that, although the public are doubtless the gainers, it was a regret to me to be deprived of the opportunity of carrying out what I know would have been the wish of my late friend. Mr. John Hopkinson then undertook the task, but his progress was hardly more rapid; and

this and other reasons render it a matter for satisfaction that the work was taken up by Mr. Jackson in the autumn of 1885.

There are many reasons which render it difficult to criticise the volume now before us. Mr. Jackson has conscientiously followed Mr. Pryor's MS.; but this was in many cases incomplete, while in others localities were given with a fullness and detail which, although representing the intentions of the author at the time they were committed to paper, would, there is reason to think, have been considerably modified before printing. Considering the small extent of the county, it may fairly be questioned whether the localities for the commoner species need have been given at such length. Papaver Argemone, for example, occupies a whole page; so does Arenaria leptoclados; Helianthemum Chamacistus has nearly two pages devoted to it; the Resedas have nearly three pages between them. Still more open to criticism is the prominence given to such annual casuals as Papaver somniferum and Camelina sativa; and it is to be regretted that such plants as Silene nutans (one or two plants on a garden wall), and S. conica ("three plants in the middle of a fifty-acre field "), should be admitted to the honours of thick type, numbered as part of the native flora of the county, and included in the " tabular statement" of distribution. Other species, as it seems to me, should have been referred to incidentally rather than as actually forming part of the Flora, on the ground of needing verification. Such are Pyrola rotundifolia, surely a mistake for P. minor,-Malaxis paludosa (on Parkinson's authority only), and Cephalanthera ensifolia (only given in Gibson's Camden).

6

As Mr. Jackson remarks in his Preface, it is matter for sincere regret that Mr. Pryor did not live to complete his work. It would, under his hands, have taken rank with Mr. Briggs's Flora of Plymouth,' in the critical notes with which the author would have enriched it. Unfortunately, they were hardly ever committed to paper, although carefully stored up in Mr. Pryor's accurate mind. In some cases his views were published, as, for example, on Epipactis latifolia (Journ. Bot. 1881, 71), Bobart's green Scrophularia (Id. 1877, p. 238), and the Hertfordshire Carices (Id. 1876, 365); and an editorial note calling attention to these would have been desirable. He had made a special study of some plants, such as the Poppies and Water Buttercups, and had hoped to publish notes on these in his book. A careful collation of Mr. Pryor's published papers in this Journal with the Flora would probably result in many corrections and additions: thus, Typha angustifolia is recorded for Hatfield (Journ. Bot. 1874, 22), which seems to answer the question raised at p. 509 of the Flora, and removes it from the list of plants (p. xxxiii.) peculiar to the Thame district.

In the main, however, the work has been carried out as the author would have wished, Among its distinctive features are the arrangements and naming according to Nyman, with such exceptions as Mr. Jackson believes Mr. Pryor would have made; the reference following the name of each genus and species to the place (I think Mr. Pryor meant also to have added the date) of publication; and an index of species as well as of genera. For the last

we have to thank Mr. Jackson, who is also responsible for the full and interesting list of contributors and the "botanical history of the county." Mr. Hopkinson contributes the geographical and geological notes. At the end are lists of Mosses, Algae, Hepatics, Lichens, and Fungi, which "must be regarded only as an attempt to gather together the Hertfordshire records of cellular cryptogams.' Mr. Pryor was a strong advocate of the division of districts in accordance with the river-basins, and this plan, originally proposed by Coleman in the previous Flora, is here more fully adopted. As a natural result, the extent of the various districts is very different: Thame and Brent being very small (though the latter is very interesting), while Colne and Lea between them include nearly the whole of the county. The six divisions are grouped under two main heads, Ouse and Thames, the former including the small divisions of Cam and Ivel, the latter the four named above.

It is much to be regretted that the Hertfordshire Society, which was materially benefitted at Mr. Pryor's decease, has not published a fuller biography than the sketch given at pp. xliv-xlvi. A copy of an excellent portrait, taken not long before his death, might well have faced the title page; and an example of his characteristic letters might have been added. No reference is made to the careful manner in which Mr. Pryor personally examined the various districts, nor is even a list of his publications appended. These seem to me serious omissions.

It was my privilege to accompany Mr. Pryor on three of the "jaunts," as he used to call them, undertaken for the purpose of examining the plants of the country. His custom was to make some place a centre for two or three days, taking walks in different directions, and carefully noting what was seen. In the evening his memoranda were transcribed into one or more of his numerous note-books, and doubtful plants examined. Recalling some of

these rambles, and the plants met with, I am inclined to think that some of those books must have been lost, or that their contents were not again entered by him in the quarto MS. books which contained the Flora. Be this as it may, there is no record in the volume of localities of certain plants which we noted together-of Cerastium arvense, for instance, which we tracked at Aldbury Owers from Buckinghamshire just into Herts, on an occasion when we vainly endeavoured to find Pulsatilla on the Buckingham side of the boundary; of Myosurus minimus, which we picked up in a cornfield near Tring station, during an after-dinner stroll on a bleak bright evening of May, 1876; and many more. Mr. Pryor's herbarium was very small, so that specimens of his gatherings are nowhere very largely represented; a considerable number, however, are in the British Museum Herbarium.

The appendix of "additional published localities with a few hitherto unpublished" (for which, of course, Mr. Pryor is in no way responsible) contains some matter for remark. The locality given for Pulsatilla vulgaris is Herts in New Bot. Guide, as "Ashley" is annotated "probably Ashley Green in Bucks." If so, it is new to the county. An old Rayan plant-" Alsine montana

minima "—which "has remained doubtful for nearly two hundred years is cleared up by Mr. Jackson's consultation of the Sloane Herbarium, and shown to be a "compact" (? young) form of Moehringia trinervia. Pyrola "media" of the New Bot. Guide figures here, although the authors of the Flora Hertfordiensis ' say that the station was in Bucks, and there can be no doubt but that P. minor was meant; so that the query may be removed from the word "error?," which Mr. Jackson has appended to the record.* Euphorbia stricta is surely an error. Blysmus compressus is here added to the Flora on the authority of Dr. De Crespigny, but without locality; a reference to the British Museum Herbarium shows specimens collected by that botanist on Rickmansworth Common Moor in 1877; Middlesex is queried for this species, but the same herbarium contains it from Harefield, collected by Dr. Forbes Young. Cystopteris fragilis surely has no claim to thick type and a number.

The list of" additions and corrections," independently of the above, extends to five pages, but is certainly by no means complete ; e. g., on p. 151, "Journ. Bot. 1874, 272," should be 1875, 212; "Couringia" (p. 31) should be Conringia, and "Vaccinum" (p. 269), Vaccinium; the last error might well be taken for a recurrence to primitive type," in these days of restoration of old names and spellings. JAMES BRITTEN.

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Lectures on Bacteria. By A. DE BARY. Translated by Henry E. F. Garnsey, Revised by Isaac Bayley Balfour. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887). Pp. xii. 193; 20 cuts. Price 6s.

ABOUT a year ago it was said in these pages that the study of Bacteriology was rapidly becoming an affair of pots and pans,— apparatus, staining media and the like,-that the Bacteria themselves were being lost sight of. No naturalist could survey the literature of the subject in our language without a misgiving that true words were then spoken in jest. Since they were printed, however, two remarkable additions have been made to our literature, riz., the section on Bacteria in De Bary's Comparative Morphology and Biology of Fungi, Mycetozoa and Bacteria,' which has been published in English form, and the same author's Lectures on Bacteria,' now under notice. These books have been made part of our literature, accessible to all; and they exhibit to us exactly the state of our knowledge of the natural history of Bacteria. The Lectures on Bacteria' are remarkable, not only on account of the survey of the subject and admirable arrangement of the matter, but in an equal degree for the style of exposition, which the translators have rendered very happily. The book not only

In Fl. Hertfordiensis we read, " P. media is certainly a native of Bucks." This is an error; and we learn from Mr. Watson's MS8. (now in the British Museum), that "the certainty rests on Mr. Pamplin's authority, who says that he knows both species (P. media and minor), and that he found the former two or three miles west of Tring, which would certainly be in Bucks.-Rev. R. H. Webb, in letter of April 10, 1849."