Flora Orien talis 125 



Orientalis" and Nyman's "Sylloge Florae Europese," as we did a short 

 time ago ; but take the nearest adjacent tract on the other side, 

 and it would lead to a misapprehension to do so as between the 

 " Flora Orientahs" and Hooker and Thomson's "Flora Indica." But 

 on this head it is only right that we should allow our author to speak 

 for himself; and, be it remembered, we say this principally by way 

 of enforcing the practical caution which his remarks convey, that 

 these are the views founded upon a practical experience of plants, 

 both in a fresh and dried state, which falls below that of very few 

 living botanists : 



" It is always difficult to recognise and to characterize species, 

 and for a country imperfectly known, the difficulty is aggravated 

 by want of material. Very often a botanist only knows a plant 

 through unique or incomplete fragments ; intermediate fornis which 

 may exist escape him, and he describes a specimen instead of a 

 species. To these ordinary causes of error, there is in the Orient 

 very frequently this also to contend with in addition — that in many 

 large genera there are no important and well marked characters 

 for the species. Of this in the present volume, Dianthus, Alyssum, 

 Tamarix, and Haplophyllum, furnish instances. We must not 

 hide from ourselves, that the limitation of species will remain 

 always a difficult problem to settle, and that unanimity is a thing 

 impossible. The modes of experiment are uncertain ; hybridiza- 

 tion gives results so much the less conclusive as the species with 

 which we work are near to one another ; and culture itself should 

 be interpreted with much prudence, because it brings the plants 

 out of their natural position, and creates influences of contact 

 between species which are not brought together in nature. Some- 

 times, besides, these experiences of culture are capricious; and, 

 somehow or other, those who make them find always results which 

 fit in with theoretic ideas. Thus experimentisers, whom I could 

 quote, say that they have obtained from the single sowing of a 

 species, one or many other species of which the specific value had 

 never before been called in question ; whilst, on the other hand, 

 botanists who attach importance to very minute differences, say 

 that they always find these forms immutable in their slightest 

 characters. For my own part, I have cultivated for twenty years 

 plants from all parts, and have seen nothing like this, neither 

 strange transformations nor absolute fixity. What I am struck 

 with most, is the facility with which hybrids form themselves in a 

 garden between species of the same genera of very distinct 



