Welsh Journals

which are not described in Clapham, Tutin and Warburg's Flora, notably Diapensia lapponica, Artemisia norvegica, Koeigia islandica and Homogyne alpina, which have been discovered in the last few years in the Scottish Highlands. The English names seem to have been chosen with careful thought as to both their suitablity and accepted usage. There is the occasional slightly surprising choice is not Radiola more familiar as Allseed, and Lloydia by its Latin name ? The main plan of the book centres round the illustrations. Some 600 species are illustrated in colour, and a further 700 with whitish or greenish flowers (including the grasses and sedges) and the ferns and their allies are illustrated in black and white. The plants in the colour plates are grouped broadly by the colour of their flowers. The text gives short descriptions of the plants illustrated, and under these comparative descriptions of related species not included in the plates. These descriptions are admirably terse and informative. It is pleasing, for instance, to find the differences between the Wild Strawberry and the Barren Strawberry, or between the leaves of Bearberry and Cowberry detailed so clearly. Under Common Quillwort is a welcome note of the characteristic awl-leaved flower- ing plants of upland lakes which might be confused with it all except the quillwort itself are illustrated together on Plate 66. It would have been useful, though, if fuller descriptions had been given of the leaves of these plants. Invaluable notes are given on both habit and habitat in the descriptions both points in which the older books are often seriously lacking. It is pointed out that the Annual Rock-rose is not obviously like a rock rose,' and its habit of dropping its petals early in the day is noted. A botanist in Wales would probably not agree with the statement that the Hoary Rock-rose is 'Very rare on limestone rocks in Wales and N. England': it is certainly as abundant in Creuddyn and Gower as it is in its Galway Bay localities. Critical' species of such genera as the hawkweeds, eyebrights, and Lady's mantles have in general been lumped In some cases this has simply restored the status quo of Bentham and Hooker, but some will be surprised to find that even Hieracium alpinum has not survived the grouping of the more difficult hawkweeds into two large aggregates. It seems a pity to lose the two little endemic sea-lavenders from Tenby and St. Davids, though as H. G. Baker has shown, they probably do not deserve the rank of distinct species. Keys' are given to some of the larger genera in the form of lists of species with particular features, such as, for instance, yellow flowers, hairy leaves, or prickly stems. A botanist may perhaps be pardoned for feeling that carefully constructed dichotomous keys of the usual pattern would have been a more systematic and certain aid to identification. In any case it would have been useful if keys could have been provided to rather more of the genera. Unfortunately, the illustrations are much less uniformly good than the text. One cannot escape the feeling that impressive as was