Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 9 (1871).djvu/177

 BOTANICAL NEWS. ]59

specimens also of more recent collection from Lancasliire and Cheshire seen by me belong to P. mbius, finds. The distinctive characters and synonymy of the species were then given. Mr. Hardy remarked that it would appear from Mr. Hunt's remarks that, besides Mr. Baker, two at least of our oldest and most able botanists had failed to difterentiate P. minus and P. mite when specimens were before them. In support of what was stated at the previous meeting- of the Society, as quoted by Mr. Hunt, he read the following extract from an article in the ' Phyto- log-ist' (vol. ii. p. 3-32), by Mr. H. C. Watson, " On the Pohjgoniim mile of Schrank and allied species " : — " Cheshire specimens (of P. mite) are in the herbarium of Sir W. J. Hooker, sent by Mr. William Wilson, under the name of P. minus (1828) ; I have also European specimens of the same species, sent with the names of laxijlorum, Weihe, duljimn, Braun, Braunii, Bluff and Fing., and mite, Persoon. Mr. Hardy declined assent to Mr. Hunt's dictum that the relative size of the nut furnished the only good character by which to separate the tv^o plants, believing that the size of the flower and the habit of growth, when occurring side by side, as these specimens did, ought not to be passed over ; the leaves, too, of the Mere Mere specimen in particular were actually more broadly lanceo- late than those of the Oxford and Surrey specimens traced by Mr. Hunt ; and both the nuts and flowers larger than any of the other selected P. viinns exhibited by Mr. Hunt, and doubtless correctly named. The piesence or absence of glands was, he believed, an important character ; but it was requisite, for the observation of these, that the specimens should be freshly gathered. Mr. Hunt's localities for P. mite in Britain are all southern, but Mr. Baker, in his ' North Yorkshire,' gives no less than four localities for it, two in the immediate neighbourhood of the city of York, and one as far north as Thirsk. Mr. Hardly also referred inci- dentally to the notes by the Hon. J. Warren in this Journal (pp. 8, 9) on the Mere Mere P. nodosum, and the Cheshire Epilohium obscurum, and stated that he believed the former to be the seedling form of P. amphlbiiim (^lerrestre)* and the latter identical with the plants published by Mr. Baker in his ' Plantse CriticEE,' and North Warwickshire Fasciculus, under the name of E. ligulatum.

gotankal |tetos.

The death is announced, on the 3rd of April, of William Wilson, of Warrington, at the age of seventy-two. He was apprenticed to a soli- citor at Manchester, and for a few years practiced his profession at War- rington, after which he devoted himself to science. In 1826, he made the acquaintance of Sir J. E. Smith and Professor Henslow, and by them was introduced to Dr. W. J. Hooker, with whose class, he, in 1827*, made his first botanical excursion. He greatly helped both Smith and Hooker in their ' British Floras,' and soon took a high place amongst botanists. From about 1830, he specially studied Mosses, and the ' Bryolo^ia Britannica,' which he published in 1855, is still the text-book of English students of that group of plants. A new edition is much wanted, as about a hundred new British species have been detected since its publica- tion, and this want Mr. Wilson had hoped to have supplied, but his

maculaium {nodosum, Auct.), or possibly P. I'ersicuria. The perianths bear a few glands. — II. TuiliEN.
 * Not so. Mr. Warren's plant is a prostrate form of eitlier, as named, P.

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