Bibliographical Notice. 61 



some of his topics are treated in detail, may often greatly assist an 

 author who desires to abbreviate or curtail ; but such assistance 

 would here be vainly sought, no works available in this way being in 

 existence. The *■ Cybele ' must thus cite and arrange its own details, 

 regarded from the geographic points of view. And, indeed, only 

 details can have permanent value at present. Attempts at generali- 

 zation, so usually made in conformity with the groups of systematic 

 botany, can have extremely little value until those groups are made 

 more settled and uniform." [But will this Utopian uniformity ever 

 come ?] " It is to the distribution of species, not of groups, that 

 attention should be given at present, especially in a local treatise. 

 Hence the resort to lists of species in this volume, as condensed 

 summaries of details adapted for comparison and reference." (Intro- 

 duction, p. 4.) 



To extend our survey with equal exactness to the general range 

 of British plants would indeed be a Herculean task, and one from 

 which our author has wisely recoiled. It would require many years 

 and many Watsons to obtain any results that could be fairly com- 

 pared with those in the volume before us. But, as was said, the 

 work is accomplished in England : let us see the foreign botanists do 

 as much for themselves. Hence we are warned (p. 10) that the 

 scope of the ' Cybele ' " must needs be confined to a view of the pre- 

 sent vegetation of Britain, and of the manner in which the compo- 

 nent species of that vegetation are now distributed within the area of 

 Britain itself, together with such inferences as may be drawn from 

 existing circumstances in regard to the probable origin of those spe- 

 cies here : that is, whether placed in Britain by natural causes, or 

 whether introduced by human agency." 



The details collected and examined in the three previous volumes 

 are so re-arranged and corrected in the fourth " as to convert the 

 individual and separated facts into collective and comparative expo- 

 sitions." Though dry reading, the arrangement of the species into 

 tabular lists has been chosen as best adapted for reference, and be- 

 cause " thus the greatest amount of special and general facts can be 

 recorded in a condensed form, under different points of view, and can 

 thus be made ready for the use of Phyto-geographers whenever the 

 botany of other countries shall become portrayed in like manner." 



Mr. Watson is suspicious of general remarks : he tells us (p. 13) 

 that, unfortunately, the so-called "general remarks" "are in truth" 

 too often " only remarks of the most vague and inexact kind. True 

 generalizations usually require much time and thought, combined 

 with a scrupulous regard to accuracy : true generalizations are in 

 consequence extremely rare." 



In Chapter II. are discussed the terms Orders, Genera, and 

 Species, with the inevitable conclusion that the two former have 

 no abstract existence in nature (p. 27), but are conventional ideas 

 only, though of course "bearing more or less accordance with the 

 realities of nature, in so far as they are intended to express and clas- 

 sify the facts of nature, if this is done only by dissevering a series or 

 chain at those poi?its where the links are widest or least coherent " 

 (P- 17)- 



