Handbook of British Rubi

Abstract

MR. ROGERS' “Handbook of British Rubi” is not a work likely to excite a wide interest. As the offering to his fellow “batologists” of “a diligent student of British brambles for nearly a quarter of a century,” it appeals to a restricted circle. No general worker in the field of systematic botany can hope to master the fine distinctions which discriminate the great majority of the so-called species; in fact, the general systematist will see at once that the batologist and he are widely at variance as to the limitation of species, and that for purposes of comparison with those of other genera and of a comparative study of floras the ‘species’ of British Rubi are useless. Generally speaking a species' is to some extent a personal matter, sometimes varying considerably in different conditions of one and the same person; but the entities recognised by several workers in one group usually bear an appreciable relation to each other and to those of other groups. It is not too much to say that there is no comparison whatever between the species of the batologist and the species of the botanist.

Handbook of British Rubi.

By William Moyle Rogers Pp. xiv + 111. (London: Duckworth and Co., 1900).