EDITORIAL NOTES. xi 



correspondence at Kew. Mr J. G. Baker has given me direct help in drawing up the lists 

 of ferns ; Mr Mitten in mosses and liverworts ; the Rev. J. M. Crombie in lichens, and 

 Dr M. C. Cooke in fungi ; and these gentlemen, together with the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, 

 Dr Nylander, the late Professor G. Dickie, and Dr Reinsch, have between them named all 

 the cryptogams. In some instances I have ventured to add references to descriptions, 

 and to give some of the more important synonyms, as well as the distribution of the 

 species ; but I have been careful to discriminate between their work and my own in order 

 that they should not suffer from any errors into which I may have fallen. As mentioned 

 elsewhere, Mr Carruthers and Mr Britten spared themselves no trouble in searching 

 through the earlier collections at the British Museum, especially the Sloane Herbarium, for 

 plants coming within the scope of my work ; and I may add that more use might have 

 been made of the British Museum collections of Polynesian plants, but as I had to deal 

 with such a very small fragment of the Flora (Admiralty Islands only) it was not thought 

 necessary, especially as Seemann enumerates, in his Flora Vitiensis, all the species he met 

 with in the British Museum Herbarium. His work, however, is in a measure supplemented 

 by a number of unpublished lists of comparatively recent collections of insular plants at 

 Kew, partly in the general Introduction, and partly in the Report on the Botany of the 

 South-eastern Moluccas. 



" Finally, it gives me much pleasure to mention that Miss Matilda Smith has taken 

 great pains with the drawings made from dried plants, and especially with the dissections 

 of the flowers. 



"With regard to the details nothing more need be said here, as everything is 

 explained that seemed to require explanation in the body of the work. I may repeat, 

 however, that full references are given in only one place for such plants as occur in more 

 than one of the florulas contained in each part of the Reports." 



The dates at which the manuscript of the Reports was received by me 

 are stated after the titles in the contents of the volume. 



Conte Abate Francesco Castracane is at present engaged in the pre- 

 paration of a report on the Diatomace^: collected at the surface of the 

 ocean and procured from the deep sea deposits. This report will form 

 Part IV. of the Botanical Series. A fifth Part, on the other pelagic algae 

 of the open ocean, will complete the series. 



John Murray. 



Challenger Office, 32 Queen Street, 

 Edinburgh, 1st June 1885. 



