84 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



Pierre — walking together into rural solitude and seeking there 

 among the wild flowers what they could not find among their 

 fellow men. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 



LXIII. — Lord Bute and John Miller. 



The Kew Bulletin for 1892 contains (pp. 306-8) an interesting 

 account — unsigned, but doubtless by Mr. W. B. Hemsley— of 

 Lord Bute's Tables, the result of an inspection of the copy in the 

 Eoyal Library at Windsor. The work itself, in spite of its rarity — 

 only twelve" copies were printed for private distribution, at the 

 cost, it is said, of £12,000 — is fairly well known ; Dryander's 

 description (Cat. Bibl. Banks.) of the Banksian copy is, as 

 usual, quite accurate. The Windsor copy contains a list of the 

 recipients of the copies, and a similar list is in the copy now in 

 the Department of Botany, which originally belonged to Mrs. 

 Shute Barrington and contains the book-plate of her husband, 

 sometime Bishop of Durham : this list, however, differs from 

 that in the Windsor copy in the substitution of Lady Ruthven's 

 name for that of Lady Weymouth. One of the copies of the work 

 was sold at the sale of Mr. Laing's library in 1879 for £77 and 

 another about the same time for about £50. f The title pages of the 

 volumes bear no date, but Mr. Hemsley notes that the first 

 volume of the Windsor copy is dated in MS. 1785 — probably in 

 Banks's hand. The work of course took a considerable time in 

 preparation : we have in the Department of Botany a bill receipted 

 by John Miller, the artist of the work, " in discharge in full of all 

 deats," which gives a list of twelve drawings and twenty engraved 

 plates deUvered March 29th, 1782. It may be interesting to 

 quote the cost of these : 



" The Engraving the Writing to 20 Plates 

 Twenty Plates coppershid [^sic'] 



Ten drawings 



Engraving Twenty Plates . 



Although Dryander's estimate of the Tables — " splendidi magis 

 quam utilis " — may be accepted, students of classification should 

 not fail to refer to the methods contained in the book and to the 

 modifications or anticipations of these in the two works hereinafter 

 described. An interesting passage may be quoted from the Intro- 

 duction (p. 20), in which Bute, having described the " foundation " 

 on which " the vegetable tables have been formed," continues: — 



• Mr. Hemsley quotes a memorandum pencilled in the Windsor copy to the 

 effect that 16 copies were printed, but this is nowhere confirmed. 



t Gard. Chron. 1879, ii, pp. 771, 776 : the two notes may possibly relate to 

 the same copy. 



