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J. A. Webb's account of The Presumably extinct Plants of West Glamorgan' reconsidered after forty -five years. Q. O. N. KAY, M.A., D.PHIL. (Department of Botany, University College of Swansea) J. A. Webb's paper on 'The Presumably Extinct Plants of West Glamorgan' was written in 1928 and published in 1929 in the Proceedings of the Swansea Scientific and Field Naturalists' Society. The last issue of the Proceedings was published in 1956, and the activities of the S.S.F.N.S. ceased in the same year. The area that they covered to the east of Swansea overlapped to a considerable extent with the area covered by the Cardiff Naturalists' Society. Webb's 'West Glamorgan' included the coastal belt north of the Ogmore, the Afan and Nedd valleys and Craig-y-llyn, but excluded the Llynfi and Rhondda valleys (though occasionally a small extension was made to include the site of a particular rarity, for example Corydalis claviculata). The greater part of Webb's paper consisted of a catalogue raisonné in three sections; in the first section Webb listed species which were 'extinct or apparently so' in west Glamorgan, in the second he listed 'doubtful records', and in the third he listed 'erroneous records'. Webb was at the time, and for many years afterwards, the most active field botanist in west Glamorgan-over 4,000 specimens collected by Webb are now in the herbarium of the National Museum of Wales-and this paper and the records that he made subsequently are thus of great interest. The paper was clearly published partly in the hope that it would stimulate fresh fieldwork and fresh searches for species that had been recorded dubiously or not seen for many years, and it is probable that Webb deliberately included a number of 'extinct' and 'doubtful' species that he suspected might in fact be present but unrecorded in the area. He made it clear that 'genuine records or reliable information. relating to the supposed extinct plants and dubious species would be welcome'. However, disappointingly few rediscoveries or confirmations of doubtful records resulted directly from the publication of the paper, although the Swansea Field Naturalists were very active at the time. Examina- tion of Webb's lists of 'new county and other records' for the years from 1929 to 1932, and of other sources, shows only three rediscoveries of 'extinct' species; Scandix pecten-veneris at Mayals in 1929, Lepidium latifolium at Briton Ferry in 1930, and Aconitum napellus at a new site near Cheriton in 1931. This disappointing result is made rather surprising by the fact that, as the following lists show, a substantial number of Webb's 'extinct' and 'doubtful' species are still found in west Glamorgan at the present day, in several cases at the original localities listed by Webb. The localities of these species are, however, for the most part not on the usual itineraries of the Swansea Field Naturalists' excursions. Webb's involvement with these excursions may thus have prevented him from re-finding a number of species, perhaps including some that are now undoubtedly extinct but may still have survived some forty years ago. The following catalogue raisonne follows the pattern of Webb's list, and includes all the species that he dealt with. The last sites and date or period of extinction given by Webb