Abstract
THE question arises, Why should the records of a parish be amplified into a book containing 300 odd pages? in reply to which the authors explain at the outset that the parish of Halifax covers 129 square miles, and corresponds to a natural geographical division, through which flows the River Calder. But although the area is circumscribed and the vertical range is not great—the altitude varies between 500 and 1500 feet—the number of plants found within the district forms a good list, which has been worked up into an attractive historical and ecological account, and in addition, owing to the cooperation of other workers, it has been possible to include lists of all the cryptogamic plants. Looking at the plant associations, the mixed deciduous woods are the habitat of the globeflower, the bird's nest orchid, the helleborine and the daffodil, while among the rare species of the heather moors are reckoned the bog-bell, the winter greens, and the bear berry. The bryologist, too, will find a good hunting ground, for, in addition to a fairly rich flora, the parish has yielded a new variety of Philonotis, the first record in Yorkshire for Amblyste gium Juratzkae, and one of the few stations in the British Isles for Jubula Hutchinsiae. With the botany of Halifax is inseparably bound up the name of John Bolton, painter and naturalist, who in 1785 published “Filices Brittanicæ,” with thirty-one copper plates all drawn by himself, and in 1791 completed “An History of Fungusses,” also provided with plates, and the extent of his collections can be gauged from the numerous records which are given in the book.
The Flora of the Parish of Halifax.
By W. B. Crump C. Crossland. Pp. lxxiv + 316. (Halifax Scientific Society, 1904.) Price 10s. 6d. net.
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The Flora of the Parish of Halifax . Nature 70, 245 (1904). https://doi.org/10.1038/070245b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/070245b0