PREFACE 



The completion of the first volume of an English Journal, specially 

 devoted to Cryptogamic Botany, enables us to congratulate our 

 readers and ourselves upon the achievement of a task which many 

 friends believed to be impossible. It is, nevertheless, an accom- 

 plished fact that " Grevillea " has reached its twelfth number, and 

 its promoters are preparing for another year's campaign. If our 

 subscribers and supporters will but continue their aid, this also we 

 hope to accomplish. The complaint which some have urged, that 

 the Journal is too scientific, will, we hope, be speedily removed, 

 not so much by any considerable alteration in the character of the 

 Journal, as by the assiduity of its readers themselves, whereby in- 

 creased knowledge and experience will bring to its perusal minds 

 more receptive, because better prepared. A popular journal was 

 never intended, but one which should become valuable — nay, in- 

 dispensable — to students and adepts in the branches of Botany to 

 which it is devoted. That it has hitherto been too exclusively 

 devoted to Fungi and Lichens is scarcely the fault of the Journal, 

 but results from the fact that these have been less studied than the 

 higher Cryptogamia, and more was necessary to be done to keep 

 pace with the discovery of new species, or the better illustration of 

 old ones. Now that the additions to British Fungi, discovered 

 since the appearance of the " Handbook of British Fungi," have 

 been recorded, and the descriptions furnished, there will be more of 

 our very limited space left free for Bryologists and Algalogists to 

 r . describe their additions, and also for communications less connected 

 with systematic than physiological Botany. It could scarcely be 

 • expected that we should secure the co-operation of all Cryptogam is Is 



