236 NEW PUBXICATIONS. 



in botany ; and fortunately the work has been here taken in liand by 

 a botanist of matured experience, who had himself visited that island 

 before devoting his attention to its flora, and who has long been prac- 

 tically familiar with most of its plants in a living condition, as identical 

 species native also in the British Islands. Add to these advantages a 

 careful examination of the scattered and riot very accessible literature 

 relating to his subject, and it will be apparent that Professor Babington 

 must have been better prepared to execute the work, than any other 

 English botanist is at all likely to be prepared for a critical examina- 

 tion into the results of the learned Professor's hibours. So far as an 

 opinion may be given under the less practical advantages, this ' Re- 

 vision' will be thankfully accepted by botanists, as much the best and 

 most reliable Flora of Iceland which has yet come before them. Even 

 with all the pains taken to ensure completeness and accuracy, the 

 author of the ' Revision' has overlooked a valuable paper by RottboU, 

 read before the Copenhagen Society so early as 1766 and 1767, and 

 published in its Transactions in 1770. This, which includes figures 

 and descriptions of about 20 new or rare Icelandic plants, is a paper 

 much too good in itself to have been willingly left unnoticed. 



After discarding from the list many species which had been recorded 

 as Icelandic plants by other botanists and travellers, the plants ad- 

 mitted into the revised Elora, although not always with full trust, now 

 number up to 467 tlowering plants and Ferns ; cellular plants not en- 

 tering into the list. The rejected species are rather inconveniently 

 spread through the general catalogue, being retained in their technical 

 places ; but being distinguished by the absence of prefixed numerals 

 in the series, and by the usual angular enclosures, they are thus made 

 separable enough, though not actually separated. These interpolated 

 rejections count up to about threescore; say, to eleven per cent, of 

 presumed errors, without any very rigorous weeding out. 



The author seldom ventures to explain decidedly his own grounds 

 or reasons for rejecting or for accepting species. -Among the doubtful 

 plants, either way, his selection appears to have been guided chiefly 

 by their presumed climatal adaptations, or their known distribution 

 elsevvhei'e in Northern Europe; occasionally, too, on other considera- 

 tions, as the credibility of the evidence or the likelihood of misnomers. 

 Though the question is simply one of fact either way, " Does this spe- 

 cies grow in Iceland, or does it not ?" yet the fact must I'est on tes- 



