BOTANICAL INFORMATION. ois 
111. On the Progress of Botany ; including Vegetable Statistics. 
This is a chapter of very great interest. In regard to amount 
of species, Lonicer in 1546 indicated 879; Lobel in 1570, 
2,191; Dalechamp in 1587, 2,751; Linnæus, in 1753, enu- 
merated 5,938 species; Persoon in 1807, 25,949; Steudel in 
1824, 50,649, and the same author in 1844, 95,000. M. La- 
ségue mentions it as a singular fact, that the proportion of 
the family of Composite, with the total of the vegetable king- 
dom, has continued the same to the present period, that is 
about onetenth. In 1838 M. de Candolle described 8,523 
Composite.  Linnæus estimated the total number of plants 
on the surface of our globe at 10,000; an amount now assu- 
redly known to be equalled (if we consider the undescribed 
species actually in our Herbaria), by the Composite alone; 
Adanson at 25,000, De Candolle at 120,000, Roemer and 
Endlicher at 250,000 and upwards; M. Laségue, with more 
probability, at from 130, to 150,000; for it must be borne in 
mind that of the 95,000 reckoned by Steudel as described in 
books, allowance must be made for species described twice, or 
even oftener, under different names, and a great amount of 
bad species. 
Iv. On Herbaria and their preparation. 
V- On Botanical Travels. 
vi. On typical Herbaria (des Herbiers-types). 
vil. Botanical Museum of M. Benjamin Delessert.—In 1788 
M. Stephen Delessert, eldest brother of the present possessor, 
began to form a Herbarium, of which the first materials were . 
collected during his travels on the continent of Europe, 
also in England and Scotland, and the United States; to 
these were added plants from Japan, India, the Cape and 
Ceylon, Dying in 1794 at the early age of 23, of yellow 
fever, in New York, his younger brother, who from his ear- 
liest youth, oceupied himself with plants, inherited his bro- 
ther's collection, a part of which was indeed formed by him- 
self, when he accompanied that brother in his travels through - 
France, Switzerland, England and Scotland. His taste for 
Botany could not but have derived an additional impulse from 
