Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/352

 326 THE FLORA OF THE ALPS. not want the complete Flora of Switzerland which Messrs. Nimmo, in the title of their book, profess to supply ; and the botanist will hardly find it. A clavis to the species, such as that given by Gremli, renders a lengthened description unnecessary, but Mr. Bennett gives us no help of this kind, and his diagnoses seem to us in many cases insufficient. A brief examination of one genus — Cerastium — will show how Mr. Bennett has treated his subject : — •' The following English lowland species of Mouse-ear Chick- weed are found also in Switzerland : — C. glomeratum, Fr. ; semi- decandrmn, L. ; triviale, Lk. ; arvense, L. ; vulgatum, L. ; viscosum, L. C. hrachycarpum, Schm., and sufriiticosum, L., are probably mountain forms of arvense ; and C. macrocavpum, Sch., oi vulgatum. C. brachypetaliim, Pers., is very nearly allied to glomeratum. C. glutinosum, L., covered with a glutinous down, is a Southern low- land species." Here the four names glomeratum, triviale, vulgatum^ and viscosum stand for as many plants, but it is certain that they only represent two of our English species: glomeratum '*Fr." should be assigned to Thuillier and for ^'brachycarjmm Schm. " we must read " Schur " : no glutinosum is assigned to Linnaeus in Mr. Jackson's Index. Among the *' more or less alpine " species, of which a descriptive enumeration follows, we find " C. Umatum Koch," by which C. lanatum Lam. is probably meant. Mr. Bennett rightly says that ** the specific characters are often very difiicult to determine; " but he has not succeeded in coi^trasting these in a helpful manner. If, for instance, we put side by side the characters given for C. alpinum and C. latifolium, we shall find that they are not mutually exclusive; the characters assigned to the one are so com- patible with those of the other, that all might apply to the same plant. '' (7. alpinum, L. " C. latifolium, L. '< Usually more or less glan- "Leaves ovate-elliptical, stiff, dular-hairy, stem 1-5-flowered, brittle, flowers large, few, petals with rosettes of leaves, flower- more than twice as long as se- stalk oblique after flowering, pals, deeply bifid, capsule nearly sepals obtuse, with a membra- globose ; high ; Switzerland, nous margin ; high altitudes ; Dauphiny." frequent." We are sorry that we cannot endorse the favourable opinion of a reviewer in the Daily Chronicle. " The descriptions," says this authority, *' are, it is true, of a technical character ; but is there a tourist who has not heard of the petals and sepals and even [!] of the anthers ? Armed with this amount of knowledge, there will be no great difficulty in running to earth a given plant." If this writer were shut up in a room with Mr. Bennett's book and a dozen ''given plants," we think he would soon alter his opinion ; it would be as reasonable to say that a man would be able to read an Arabic work because he had learned the English alphabet. The Spectator considers the plates " in most cases exceedingly faithfully