Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/463

 SHORT NOTES. 43 1 of the local flora, on which he published various scattered papers, and finally, in 1875, a volume, which was favourably reviewed by Dr. Trimen in this Journal for that year. Numerous notes, chiefly on Sussex and North Wales plants, were contributed by him to our pages. Mr. Roper was also interested in the nomenclature of British plants, and the possession of a fine botanical library enabled him to acquire a considerable knowledge of the literature of botany. He bequeathed his herbarium of flowering plants to the Sussex County Museum at Brighton. Mr. Roper was an active member of the Eastbourne Natural History Society, of which he was at one time President ; he took a prominent part in establishing the local museum and free library, and in many other ways he showed his interest in local afifairs. He had been a member of the Linnean Society since 1857. Our readers, many of whom have experienced Mr. Roper's courtesy in trans- mitting specimens of rare or local plants, will be glad to possess a likeness of their correspondent ; for the opportunity of reproducing this we are indebted to Mr. Freeman Roper, who is himself interested in botany, and has contributed to this Journal. SHORT NOTES. Maianthemum bifolium in Durham. — I came upon a large patch of this j)lant — say twenty to thirty feet in extent — in a plantation on a steepish bank near the Derwent under Hunstan worth, on the Durham side of the river. It is just the habitat for it as I remember the plant in Norway, so far as I can judge. The trees about are spruce, larch, oak, birch, &c. ; the general undergrowth of the planta- tion, Luzula sylvatica, Oxalis, Geranium, si/lvaticum, with male, shield, and oak ferns. The deciduous trees of the plantation not imme- diately near, besides the above, are sycamore, beech, and mountain ash — no trace of gardener's work, as Vi7ica, rhododendron, and such like. I do not see why it should not be a genuine station. My friend Mr. Howse, of the Newcastle Museum, informs me that a station for the plant near Blanchland — I think probably the place ill which I found it — is known to the Rev. Mr. Dunn of that village; he also tells me that the late Mr. Dinning told him he had found it near Rothbury, in central Northumberland, some years ago. — D. Oliver. Lamarck and De Candolle's Flore Fran^aise (ed. 3). — This work was published in five volumes, of which the last constitutes a supplement. In many copies each volume is dated 1815. In the Kew Herbarium copy there is attached to the title-page of vol. i. a letter from Alphonse De Candolle, in which he says that many copies are wrongly dated, and that the correct date for vols, i.-iv. is 1805, not 1815 ; this latter date is correct only for the last volume (the supplement). Many new plants (or at least new names) are described by De Candolle in this work, and the bringing back of the date to the same year as that of Persoon's Synopsis Plantarum is important from the priority point of view.