i8 9 9-] 123 



NOTES. 



BOTANY. 



Note on the arrangement of a Flora. 

 A word with regard to the Appendix to the Cybele. I wish to say that, 

 on the question of putting excluded plants in an appendix, I cannot 

 agree with the reviewer in December number, but entirely approve of 

 the practice adopted in the preparation of the Cybele. That practice has 

 the high sanction of Sir J. D. Hooker, in his Student' 's Flora. The classi- 

 ficatory instinct rebels against the commingling of dissimilar subjects, 

 and the inconvenience spoken of, if any, is infinitesimal. 1 find none. 

 When one wishes to know of plants outside the native flora, we look at 

 once to the appendix. At all events, life need not be run at such a rate 

 that we must sacrifice the seemly in order to gain half a second of time. 



S. A. Stewart. 

 Belfast. 



There are certainly two sides to this question, but Mr. Stewart's 

 arguments appear to me to be not convincing. A discussion on the 

 subject would be hardly in place here, but let me briefly refer to three 

 of Mr. Stewart's points. He quotes Hooker as sanctioning the relega- 

 tion of excluded plants to an appendix in his Student's Flora. But he does 

 not mention that in almost every other standard work on general or 

 local British botan} 7 , from Sowerby, Watson, and Babington, down to 

 innumerable county Floras, such plants are inserted in their proper 

 places in the body of the work. As regards classificatory instinct, one 

 would think it would rebel rather against the splitting up of a flora into 

 halves than against its treatment according to the recognised system of 

 classification. Lastly, Mr. Stewart says ; " when one wishes to know of 

 plants outside the native flora, we look at once to the appendix." But 

 who is to say what is the " native flora" ? It is notorious that no two 

 botanists can agree on the question. The line separating native plants 

 from naturalized species, and these again from colonists or denizens, is 

 a devious and arbitrary one. Nor is it even constant to any one author's 

 standard, for the flora is ever changing; the casuals of to-day may be 

 the most assertive and well-established species of to-morrow, and the 

 unquestioned claims of others may crumble before the searching 

 scrutiny of the latter-day botanist. A comparison of the old and new 

 editions of Cybele well exemplifies this, showing how many plants have 

 gone up in the world and others come down. If " excluded" plants are 

 separated from their allies and placed in an appendix, none but the 

 author of the work can be sure in which place to find many of them, 

 and even his standard may change, as the world goes on and knowledge 



increases. 



R. Lxoyd Praeger. 

 Dublin. 



