PREFACE. XV 



volumes, written in English, with a few indifferent 

 plates, was published the year before the second edi- 

 tion of the Flora Anglica^ and is a useful companion 

 to that work. But if Hudson be censurable for 

 blindly copying synonyms, what shall we say of 

 Lightfoot? He translated entire descriptions from 

 foreign writers, without any indication of the sources 

 from whence they were borrowed, and many of them 

 are now known to belong to different plants from 

 ours, so that the student is led into a labyrinth of 

 error, from which he has no means of extricating 

 himself, nor indeed of knowing when he is in the 

 right path. 



The first edition of Hudson having become so very 

 scarce, a Latin Flora AngUca, on a more compen- 

 dious plan, was begun in 1774, by the present Sir 

 Thomas Gery Cullum, Bart. But this work w^as sup- 

 pressed on the appearance of the second edition, and 

 goes no further than the genus Daucus, a few copies 

 only having been distributed gratuitously by the 

 highly estimable author amongst his friends. 



An English work translated from the full generic, 

 and essential specific, characters of Linnaeus, as far 

 as regards British plants, exclusive of Grasses, Trees, 

 and all the Cri/ptogamia, except Ferns, was published 

 at Kendal in 1775, by Mr. James Jenkinson. This 

 might serve to initiate young beginners, ignorant of 

 Latin, into the Linnsean mode of description. 



A far more complete and valuable work, in our 

 native tongue, appeared in 1786, from the pen of 

 the late William Withering, M.D., an eminent phy- 

 sician at Birmingham, under the title of " A Botani- 

 cal Arrangement of all the Vegetables naturally 



