UBfMKY 



NEW YORK 

 bOfAMCAL 



PREFACE. 



Much of the value of all works depends upon their 

 having a good index ; if this is true as a general rule, it is 

 much more so with regard to books of great extent, involving 

 multitudes of independent facts, and especially in the case 

 of such a publication as the Botanical Register, of which 

 twenty-three volumes have appeared without any classified 

 catalogue of their contents. It is true, that alphabetical lists 

 of the plants figured in those volumes have been already 

 published, but one list stopped with the 13th volume, and 

 the other applies only to the 1 succeeding ones ; they are 

 moreover merely alphabetical, while a systematical index is 

 quite as necessary, and they contain no references to the 

 numerous synonymes ascertained during the progress of the 

 publication. These considerations have led the editor to 

 undertake the laborious task of preparing a new and com- 

 plete index, both classified and alphabetical, of the entire 

 work, including not merely the names of the plants actually 

 figured, together with their synonymes, but references to all 

 the genera and species described only in the notes, and to 

 such systematical and physiological observations as are to be 

 found scattered through the pages. In doing this, the 

 opportunity has been taken of revising the whole of the 

 nomenclature, and of introducing such changes and cor- 

 ^ rections as the rapid progress of Systematical Botany has 

 ■•"- rendered necessary. The systematical index has thus become 

 t^ a silent commentary upon the whole 23 volumes, and is an 



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