Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/94

72 flowering plants, orchids, ferns and fungi; and on all these subjects the author has much information to impart. The district is particularly rich in orchids, no less than fifteen species having been collected and identified. The sandy lanes of Sussex are well known for the profusion of ferns, with which, in many places, their high banks are clothed; but we were scarcely prepared to learn that in this "corner parish of West Sussex" no less than seventeen species may be found. Under the head of Fungi, the author notices a specimen of the Giant Puff-ball (Lycoperdon giganteum), obtained in the autumn of 1873, which measured thirty-eight inches and a half in horizontal circumference by thirty-one inches in vertical circumference, and weighed six pounds!

It is unfortunate for the reader that there is no index to this book; for a good index would have added considerably to its utility. We presume by some oversight it was forgotten!

We should have liked to learn something about the herd of Red Deer which once roamed in Lady Holt Park, and since Mr. Gordon has referred (p. 131) to an entry in the Caryll Account-book for Lady Holt, "Ap. 22, 1700. Paid Jones ye faulconer a year's wages, ending Lady Day last, £8," it would have been interesting to know something about hawking on the South Downs in the days of Queen Anne. We can add a new quadruped to the fauna of Halting, in the shape of the Bank Vole (Arvicola riparia), which Mr. Weaver thinks he has not identified with certainty, but a specimen of which we picked up dead one day in autumn, on the hill outside the park gates. As the Pipistrelle is not included amongst the Bats (p. 233), and we have often seen it on the wiug about the lanes of Halting, we presume that, by a lapsus calami, the rarer Barbastelle has been inadvertently allowed to take its place. We will not refer to the typographical errors further than to say that, considering the number of scientific names which of necessity appear in a book of this kind, the printers may be congratulated upon the existence of fewer misprints than might have been expected.

Apart from its value as a contribution to county history, the book, on the whole, furnishes one of the best accounts of a local fauna and flora which we have met with for some time, and we commend it to the notice of every zoologist and botanist.