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American plant-names, compiled from various trustworthy sources by Mrs. Fannie D. Bergen. It is intended as a preliminary to a complete collection of these names, which it is hoped may do for the United States what the Dictionary of English Plant-names has done for Great Britain.

Messrs. A. Stewart and R. Lloyd Præger have published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (3rd Series, ii., No. 2) a full and interesting "Report on the Botany of the Mourne Mountains, Co. Down," from which we make an extract on p. 21. The nomenclature is somewhat odd: e. g., "Lepidium smithii (Linn.) Hook."

THE price of the Kew Bulletin has been raised to fourpence monthly. The contents of the November number are entirely economic.

A NEW magazine, to be devoted entirely to Orchids, is announced to appear on the 1st of January. There are already a large number of Sunday newspapers, but a Sunday periodical of this class is a novelty, and, as it seems to us, an undesirable one. The Orchid Review, as it is to be called, will be under the editorship of Messrs. R. A. Rolfe and F. Leslie. Mr. Rolfe's connection with Kew will be of great advantage to the new venture, and the "Decades of Orchids," which have appeared somewhat out of place in the Kew Bulletin, will no doubt form an important and appropriate feature of The Orchid Review.

A NEW Monthly magazine, to be called Erythea, will begin with the new year. It will be under the direction of members of the Botanical Department of the University of California, the editor being Mr. Willis L. Jepson.

We observe in Grevillea a note that "the statements respecting [its] proprietorship that have appeared in the Journal of Botany and elsewhere are entirely imaginary and incorrect." The point is one of the very slightest importance, but, so far as we are concerned, our information that Grevillea had become the property of Mr. Batters was derived from Mr. Batters himself, who might very reasonably have been supposed to speak with authority on the matter.

OBITUARY.

WE greatly regret to record the death of CHRISTOPHER PARKER SMITH, an authority of prominence in the study of British Muscinea, especially Hepatica. He was born at Brighton on the 13th October, 1835, and began to work at botanical subjects (at first flowering plants) in 1858, the year of his marriage. About twelve years after this date he acquired the herbarium of the late Mr. E. Jenner, A.L.S., and particularly after this time devoted himself with enthusiasm to botanical pursuits. His vigour and energy as a collector brought him into communication and corres

pondence with many contemporary British botanists; and he enjoyed the friendship of Mr. Mitten, Mr. West of Bradford, and the late Mr. G. Davies, with whose work he was in fullest sympathy, and of whom he gave some account in this Journal for 1892 (p. 288). His friendship for Mr. Davies was in fact no ordinary one, and the death of this enthusiastic fellow-worker made a very visible impression on him. Mr. Smith belonged to the class of naturalists who are so averse from publication that it becomes a matter of research to their brethren to discover their hidden stores of knowledge. Singularly enough, he combined this public reticence with a keen pleasure in orally discussing subjects of work and research, and no one could fail to be struck by his great and wide knowledge, and the remarkable readiness with which he brought it to bear. In this way he served other naturalists with great success. Now and then Mr. Smith could be surprised into publication, and the Annual Reports of the Brighton Natural History Society testify to the excellence of his work. There is a report of a paper of his "On Mosses" (12 Nov., 1869); and at the following meeting (9 Dec.), he read an excellent one "On the gemmæ of Mosses." In January, 1876, he read a singularly interesting paper "On Bees," which illustrates, or rather merely indicates, his wide knowledge of Natural History. It is, however, by his acutely critical knowledge of British Musci and Hepatica that Mr. C. P. Smith has made his name known and respected. His Moss-Flora of Sussex (Brighton, 1870, 8vo), will remain as the best memorial of the sound and painstaking work of this botanist. He devoted all his spare time and all his holiday to his favourite pursuit, and during recent years made annual excursions to the Highlands of Scotland in search of novelties. His death, after ten months of illness, from cancer in the stomach, occurred at Hassocks, on the 15th November. G. M.

Christopher Parker Smith died on the 15th November, in the 57th year of his age, at his residence, Tulley Veolan, Hassocks. For many years an assiduous collector of plants which delighted him alike for their varied form and structure, he was a skilled hand in making sections of vegetable tissue. He acquired, after the death of Edward Jenner, author of the Flora of Tunbridge Wells and of the drawings in Ralph's Desmidiæ, all the botanical specimens collected by him during his periodical visits to every farmhouse in Sussex, on foot, in pre-railroad times. This collection Mr. Smith had but recently got into order. Continually on the railway between Brighton and London, and well posted up in the best thought of the time, Mr. Smith was ready to join in conversation on the most diverse subjects. Nothing seemed to please him better than to make extracts or copy figures from the rarer books on botany, and for this purpose he was a frequent visitor to South Kensington. Ever at the service of his many friends, Mr. Smith had but little time to devote to consecutive investigation. He will be greatly missed by those who always found him a cheerful companion, a sagacious counsellor, and firm friend.

W. MITTEN.

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CAREX RHYNCHOPHYSA, which I have now the pleasure of adding to the British flora, is a large and handsome plant, closely resembling C. rostrata, of which some of the continental authorities have described it as a variety. I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Arthur Bennett for the following description, synonymy, &c. :

Carea rhynchophysa C. A. Meyer in Ind. sem. Hort. bot. Imp. Petrop. No. 9, suppl. p. 9 (1844).

C. ampullacea B. robusta Weinmann, Enum. stirp. agr. Petrop. p. 92 (nomen), (1837).

C. bullata Schkur, B. lævirostris M. N. Blytt, Fl. Chr., ex Fries, Mantissa, ii. 59 (1839).

C. lævirostris Fries in Bot. Notiser, p. 24 (1844).

C. ampullacea B. obesa Hartmann; Handb. Skand. Flora, ed. 5 (1849).

(C. rhynchophysa Liebman, Mexican Halv. p. 76, 1850, is quite a different plant, and is C. physorhyncha Steudel, Cyper. Plant. 219, 1855.)

Exsiccata. Fries; Herb. Normale, fasc. 6, No. 74; Herb. Fl. Ingrica, Cent. 5, No. 782.

Figures.-Flora Danica Supp. 1, t. 36 (1858); Anderson, Cyper. Scand. t. 8, fig. 108 (1849).

Distrib. Finland (10 provinces); Russia, Perm, Wiätka, province of Ingermanland (St. Petersburg); Norway, Lapland, Sweden, provinces of Vermland, Ostrobothnia, and Vesterbotten. Silesia, Transylvania. Indicated also in Siberia by Gmelin; Davuria.

Plant subcæspitose, 24-34 in. high; leaves - in. broad, tapering-acute at the apex, as long as, or longer than, the culms, scabrid on the edges, the sheaths of the lower leaves loose, those of the middle ones closed; culms erect, semiterete at the base, triangular in the middle, and from the lowest spike upwards usually triquetrous; bracts very leafy, longer than the male spikes; spikes curved outwards at the base, then nearly erect, the lowest with a longer peduncle; female spikes 3-4, the uppermost usually with male flowers at the apex (and sometimes the second one also), 1-3 in. long; male spikes 4-6, sessile, -21 in. long, in flower usually adpressed to the stem, in fruit diverging or semi-patent; glumes of the female flowers (nearly hidden when in ripe fruit) linear-lanceolate, acute, the apex often slightly recurved, reddish brown, with a broad band of pale green down the centre, and scarious at the apex; glumes of the male flowers lanceolate and apiculate, pale yellowish brown, with scarious edges; fruit globose, inflated, tapering into a rather long cleft beak, with slightly diverging lobes, with 10-12 fine nerves (prominent only when dried), yellowish when ripe, the apex of the spikes often suffused JOURNAL OF BOTANY.-VOL. 31. [FEB. 1893.]

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