Page:The Journal of Indian Botany.djvu/178

 the absence of chromatophores and presence of pyrenoids and starch in the former, which characters differentiate the genus Characium from Characiopsis. S. L. G.

Biography. John Goodyear of Mapledurham by G. Claridge Druce, Suppl. to the Botanical Exchange Club Report 1916.

This booklet which has only just now come into my hands is an account, compiled it is clear with great industry, of John Goodyear, a native of Hampshire, who lived 1591 — 1664, and was one of Englands early Botanists. He grew in his own garden many interesting plants, including at that time, the very rare Jerusalem artichoke, the tubers of which however he evidently found disappointedly indigestible; but moved later to Oxford, attracted no doubt by the recently opened Garden of Physic. The record of his work lies chiefly in references by Johnson in his second edition of Gerard's Herbal, but also by John Parkinson in Paradisus Terrestris, William How in Phytologia Britanica and Merrett in Pinax. Those who know and love their English flora will find interesting details of the first mention of many species as growing in Hampshire or even in England. To others perhaps the chief interest will lie in the striking confirmation afforded of the difficulties the earlier Botanists had in naming their finds, and of the tremendous service rendered by Linnaeus in his establishment of a simple and workable system of nomenclature. Some of the names call for no particular remark except as being curiously literal translations into Latin of the common English ones, e.g. Grameu Parnassi for the Grass of Parnassus (Fantasia sp.). But what chiefly strikes one as illustrating the debt we owe to Linnaeus is the length and clumsiness of many of the names, which were used prior to that botanists day. Thus what Linnaeus afterwards called, and we now call, Galeopsis tetrahit, was Cannabis spuria altera, flor. purp. (the purple flowered spurious Hemp). Potamogetoit crispus L. was known as Tiiulus aquaticus minor quercus floribus (the lesser waterweed, oak-flowered), and P. densus L. as Tribixlus aquaticus minor muscalellac floribus (the lesser waterweed with flowers of the Muscatell). No doubt "aquatic tribulation," if that is a nearer translation, would fittingly describe this troublesome genus, but what a clumsy way of distinguishing the species, compared with Linnaeus' binomial system. The descriptions it may be said were always in English, only the names in Latin. Goodyear's careful descriptions of the four different kinds of Elm (one of which, not the Wych Elm, he called Witch Hasell) are quoted in full as showing the character of his work, and a list is given of his MS. notes and of the very fine collection of books which he presented to the Library of Magdalen College, Oxford. P. F. F.

Printed and Published for the Proprietor by W. L. King at the Methodist Publishing House, Mount Road, Madras.