Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/109

 STEUCTURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF MOSSES AND FERNS. 89 beginners in the study, who need much help, and would also pro- mote a knowledge of distribution, and prepare the way for a new edition of the London Catalogue of Mosses, now so much required. At least thirty active members would be required to make such a society successful. I have already had offers of support from a number of friends, and shall be glad if any persons willing to join such a society will send in their names to me. If I receive sufficient support, I will then communicate with some of our leaders in bryology for their advice and assistance. Failing this, with a smaller number it would still be possible to conduct a club by correspondence, but only for exchange of specimens. — 0. H. Waddell, B.D., Saintfield Vicarage, Co. Down. Impatiens Noli-me-tangere in Sussex. — Has the above plant any claim to be considered truly wild in the South of England? It certainly looks so in a large marsh where a pond once stood, near Felbridge, in East Sussex, where the Kev. J. Thorp (of Fel- bridge) found it some years ago, and where last year I saw it flowering abundantly. I do not think cottagers grow it at all in Sussex or Surrey as a flower. — C. E. Salmon. NOTICES OF BOOKS. The Structure and Development of the Mosses and Ferns [Archegoniatce), By Douglas Houghton Campbell, Ph.D. London and New York : Macmillan & Co. 189^. Pp. viii, 544 ; 266 figs, and 2 diagrams. Price 14s. net. The archegoniate cryptogams — the Mosses and Ferns — are so important, both in themselves and also in reference to the evolution of the higher plants, and the papers that treat of them are so numerous, so widely scattered through periodical literature, and so often inaccessible owing to their scarcity or to our ignorance of the language in which they are written, that it has become extremely desirable that all that is known of the morphology of the arche- goniate plants should be collected, sifted, and compacted into the limits of a single volume. The average botanist, who takes an interest in the subject, and feels unsatisfied with the summarised account afforded by text-books, is apt to find the claims made upon his time by his own particular line of work to be too great to per- mit of his indulging in a personal search after original papers. A ready hand of welcome is therefore extended to receive the new book, in which Mr. Campbell, the Professor of Botany at the Stanford University in California, has endeavoured to collect all that is essential for a comparative study of the group. The author has not, however, by any means confined himself to a mere compilation from the work of others, but has made it his aim by patient and independent research to place himself as far as possible in such a position that he may be able to narrate the facts at first hand, and to confirm or correct the statements of previous