PREFACE 
A GLANCE over the pages of this AVork will be sufficient to show that, although H.M. Ship 
Herald visited many little-known regions of the globe, and brought the Author into districts 
never before, or but partially, explored, the number of new genera and species obtained was 
extremely limited, and old, well-established ones formed the great bulk of the collections, — 
a peculiarity still more apparent when compared with the results of previous voyages and 
travels of a similar nature. Two chief reasons must be advanced to account for this sin- 
gular fact. On the one hand, it cannot be denied that only a few, very few districts of this 
planet present any considerable amount of novelty ; on the other hand, I enjoyed, in the 
determination of my harvest, the advantage of free access to the largest Herbarium in the 
world, that which the liberality of Sir W. J. Hooker has thrown open to the scientific public ; 
an advantage enabling me to identify most of my plants with already described ones, and 
preserving botanical literature from a series of synonyms with which, under less favourable 
circumstances, it must and would have been hampered ; for however necessary and useful 
good books and plates are in determining and establishing the correct position of plants, it 
is only after consulting extensive Herbaria that any conscientious mind nowadays ventures 
to launch new genera and species on the troubled waters of systematic botany : hence what 
at first would appear an unfavourable feature, will on second consideration prove perhaps 
one of the best recommendations of this Work. 
I have now to express to Sir W. J. Hooker my heartfelt thanks for admitting me, in 
common with many other men of science, to the privilege of consulting his valuable private 
collections, and at the same time beg leave to assure him that the assistance I received from 
him will ever be remembered with feelings of sincere gratitude. It is also my pleasing duty 
• to return my best thanks to Dr. J. D. Hooker, who, by undertaking to furnish the analyses 
to the Plates, has given to this Work a value which raises it far above the level it would, 
without this advantage, have attained, and who, by his ever-ready and kind aid, saved me 
from many a quicksand into which I should otherwise have fallen. I am no less proud of 
bein^ able to allude ito various other great names who have conferred upon me the honour 
