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XXII. Observations on the Vicia angustifolia of the English Flora 

 of Sir James Edward Smith, P.L.S. By Edward Forster, Esq., 

 F.R.S. V. P.L.S. 



Read December 15, 1829- 



Encouraged by the readiness always shown by our late re- 

 vered President to listen to any suggestions made by me, though 

 they were contrary to his own preconceived opinions, I venture 

 to offer to the Linnean Society some remarks on the Vicia an- 

 gustifolia of the English Flora, to which I have been led by 

 perceiving a Vicia lately figured under that name in the Supple- 

 ment to English Botany, for the continuation of which useful 

 work the public are greatly indebted to the sons of the able 

 coadjutor of Sir James Edward Smith. I trust the eminent 

 botanists who have furnished and described the Vicia, n. 2614. 

 of that publication, will receive the freedom of my statements 

 with the same candour with which they would have been met by 

 my late friend. 



When, fortunately for the botany of Great Britain, the her- 

 barium of Linnaeus came into the possession of our founder, he 

 very soon perceived that some few plants had been erroneously 

 referred to the Species Plantarum of Linnaeus, by Hudson in his 

 Flora Anglica, — a book which is less consulted by authors of the 

 present time than it ought to be, — for it is certainly a work of 

 great merit, and it may fairly excite wonder that more mis- 

 application of the Linnaean nomenclature does not occur in it. 



It 



