580.(42.23) 31 



II 



Botanical Work Wanting Workers l 



rr\HE field for investigation in botanical work is so extensive and 

 -L increases so rapidly every year, as new discoveries open up new 

 \ istas of possible knowledge, that it will, doubtless, have been taken 

 for granted that the title of this paper can refer only to those 

 branches of the subject in which this Association is especially inter- 

 ested, viz., the flora of the four South Eastern Counties. Of these 

 four counties I have limited myself to the County of Kent, as being 

 the one with which I am most familiar, and as best serving my pur- 

 pose, although the following remarks will probably apply with eipial 

 force to the other counties. 



An examination of the various county floras that have already been 

 published shows that the flowering plants have, as a rule, received much 

 more attention than the cryptogams, and that in very few instances 

 have adequate county lists of Mosses, Lichens, Fungi, or Algae 

 been published. Such as have appeared are usually imperfect in 

 one or other of the groups, especially as regards dates and localities, 

 the Mosses and Fungi being generally those best represented. It 

 is therefore this branch of botanical work which specially needs 

 workers, and to which I wish to direct particular attention. A 

 Flora of Kent is, I understand, now going to press, but includes at 

 present only the flowering plants. 



About twenty years ago an attempt was made to collate the 

 various cryptogamic lists existing in small local floras, or in pub- 

 lished reports of Kentish Natural History Societies, and to render 

 them as complete as possible by further personal investigations. The 

 results obtained were published by myself, so far as the mosses, scale- 

 mosses, and lichens were concerned, in the Journal of Botany for 1877 

 and 1878, and my friend Mr T. Howse kindly undertook to add to 

 and complete the manuscript list of Fungi, which I had in prepara- 

 tion. He subsecruently published it in the same journal in 

 1879. lint the marine and fresh-water Algae still remain to be 

 worked out. The object in publishing these lists, in their admittedly 

 incomplete state, was to induce isolated workers in different parts 

 of the county to contribute such information as they might have 

 accumulated. But except by those who were already working at 



1 A paper road before the S.E. Union of Scientific Societies, meeting at Croydon, on 

 June l. L898. 



