Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/115

 I BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, ETC. 95 during 1886-1890, and one appeared in July, 1891. Then came a period of three years during which nothing was published, but an instalment of sixty pages was issued in June 1894, since which a year and a half has gone by without further publication. We hope the Linnean Society will press forward this important undertaking, the incompleteness of which is a great drawback to its usefulness. The Proceedings of the Somersetshire Archasological and Natural History Society for 1895 is mainly occupied by the third and con- cluding part of the Eev. E. P. Murray's Flora of Somersetshire, extending from Solanacea to Characece, with an appendix. The introduction and title, completing the work, will be sent out with the Proceedings for the present year, and we trust the copies of the Flora will be issued separately, as the usefulness of Mr. Murray's work will otherwise be considerably lessened. We reserve a more detailed account of what appears to be an important addition to our list of local floras, in the hope that we may later obtain a copy of the completed work. Mrs. Babington is preparing for publication a 'Life' of the late Prof. Babington, and will be grateful for the loan of letters written by him, which will be promptly returned. Her address is — Brook- side, Cambridge. Dr. Trimen will leave England for Ceylon about the middle of the present month. In the Annals of Scottish Natural History for January, Mr. Druce subjects the ninth edition of the London Catalogue to exceedingly minute criticism. Some of his suggestions are worthy of con- sideration ; others (such as the resuscitation of ignored genera) are of doubtful utility ; while the publication in a review of this kind of numerous new binominals is not in accordance with the practice of the best authorities, who properly leave the manufacture of such combinations to the monographer, whose work on a genus entitles him to add his name to them. The usefulness of Mr. Druce's paper is marred by the presence of numerous misprints of various kinds — a casual glance through it detects such oddities as " Zannichellia arvensis " ; such misspellings as  rotboellioides," (twice) and *' Alphonso de Candolle " ; and such citations as  Adans. Fam. p. 16" for *'Adans. Fam. ii. 164." Mr. Druce is not always happy in his corrections of the London Catalogue: he takes exception to Epilobium alsinefolium, and says, '' Villars wrote alsini folium.'" We have not seen Villars' Prospectus; but in Hist. PL Dauph. iii. 511, he writes ^^ Epilobium alsinefolium. Prosp. 45." The Pharmaceutical Society has issued an excellently printed Museum Report, containing a descriptive list of the donations made during 1893-4. We note that the natural orders all terminate in ace(B; this ** deviation from custom has been made with the view of rendering the meaning of the names more easily understood by students" — an admirable aim which it seems to us is hardly
 * ' anagalladifolium," and " Sueda " ; such authorities as " Allione"