86 NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



business, however, is not with the zoolo<jical side of tlie book, but with the 

 more extensive catalogue of plants by which nearly two-thirds of it is occu- 

 pied. For the list of flowering: plants and Ferns botanists are indebted 

 to Mr. H. C. Watson, for that of the Mosses and Ueputica to Mr. Mitten. 



We are so much accustomed to look upon Mr. "Watson as our veteran 

 British botanist, that it is a small surprise to find him occupying himself 

 with the flora of a foreign land ; it is probable that many of our readers 

 now learn, for the first time, that, so long back as 1842, Mr. Watson 

 spent four mouths on one of H. M.'s shi[)s (then engaged in surveying 

 the Azores) examining, as well as such circumstances would allow, the 

 vegetation of those islands. Some results of this expedition, as far as 

 botany is concerned, will be found in vols. ii. and iii. of Sir W. Hooker's 

 ' London .Journal of Botany,' the latter of which contains a full list of all 

 the species then known. To this were added in the sixth volume, some 

 fifty more found by Mr. Hunt, a resident in St. Michael's. Mr. Watson 

 himself collected some 340 species, and for the last twenty-five years has 

 had many in cultivation in his garden. From all this it will be evident 

 that he is very well fitted, from his own observation, to write an Azorean 

 flora, whilst it is scarcely necessary to say that in estimating the value of 

 the alleged facts of other observers no botanist has had more experience 

 than Mr. Watson. 



In our volume for 1867 (Vol. V. p. 89), M. Drouet's 'Catalogue de la 

 Flore des lies Azores,' published the previous year, was noticed, and 

 the careless manner in which, from ignorance of synonymy, the list of 

 species is unduly extended, was alluded to. In the catalogue before us, 

 Mr. Watson credits Mr. Drouet and his fellow-collectors with the ad- 

 dition of but thirteen species to those previously known. The whole 

 number of species enumerated in Mr. Watson's list is 478, and it is 

 probal)le that further research would not greatly add to this number, as 

 Mr. Godman, who collected in 1865, and brought over a fine series of 

 specimens, some or all of which are now in the Kew herbarium, oidy 

 added six species. Of the whole number, the author has seen specimens 

 of all but thirty-eight, and of these some will probably turn out to 

 be errors of name. This is not a large flora for a group of nine islands, 

 lying between 37° and 40° N. latitude; and even of these species not a 

 few are likely to be recent introductions from Europe. The nearest point 

 of the Continent to the Azores is the southern part of Portugal, distant 

 some 750 or 800 miles, and as Dr. Hooker has pointed out, the Azorean 

 flora is mainly S. European or Mediterranean ; about 400 species are com- 

 mon to Europe and the Azores, and it is especially to the rich and varied 

 flora of the Peninsula that the island vegetation has the greatest affinity. 

 Mr. Watson gives a list of ten Azorean species which occur in Europe in 

 the Peninsula alone, and his surmise of this list being probably incomplete 

 is doubtless correct ; published mntter on the Portuguese flora is very 

 scanty, but an examination of Dr. Welwitsch's extensive collection made 

 in Algarvia, the southernmost province of Portugal, would, it is believed, 

 add to its flora several species now supposed to be restricted to the Atlantic 

 isles. Of the European species found in the Azores, more than 270 

 appear to be British ; the south-west part of Ireland is next after Portugal 

 the part of Europe nearest to the islands, and it is interesting to find some 

 characteristic Irish species in iheir flora, Dabeocia ■poUfoUa and Trichomanes 

 sjjtciu6am, for example. After deducting these Eiirojiean species, some 



