LORD BUTE AND JOHN MILLER 85 



" The utility of something hke this ' occurred to me early in life 

 —and after many years' experience my opinion remains the same. 

 Had the person employed by me, formerly, to execute this scheme, 

 lived to give a new edition of his work, the many errors (unavoid- 

 able in so voluminous an undertaking) carefully corrected, might 

 have answered every purpose — but his death left the w^hole design 

 so imperfect, so altered from the original idea, that I discovered 

 with difficulty the out-line of my plan. It became necessary there- 

 fore to review the whole subject— in doing which, I incline to 

 think some considerable improvements have been made, both in 

 the distribution and characters." The work referred to is the 

 Vegetable System of John Hill (to 1775) which was undertaken at 

 the suggestion of Bute. The reference to " the person employed " 

 would seem to indicate that Bute also subsidized the work, but it 

 would appear that such an undertaking, if entered into, was not 

 carried out." 



The " thin volume of letterpress of 51 pages," entitled Intro- 

 duction to the General Tables of Plants, loith a further explanation 

 of the Tabular Arrangement, of which Mr. Hemsley has seen the 

 Windsor copy, may, as he suggests, have been issued with vol. i of 

 the Tables — a suggestion based on the fact that Dryander cata- 

 logues it at the end of the volume. But as it appears neither in 

 the Banksian, the Windsor nor in the Barrington copy of the 

 volume this conclusion may be doubted, especially as it was the 

 Banksian copy which Dryander catalogued. The copy in the 

 Department of Botany is in a marbled-paper wrapper evidently 

 contemporary with the text, which has neither title-page nor 

 author's name. It was clearly the Introduction to a proposed 

 larger work ; this is indicated in the first sentence, and definitely 

 asserted in the MS. note by Bute in the Windsor copy : *' [the 

 pages] are an Introduction to the General History of Vegetables, 

 a .very extensive Plan a great part of which is done, but there 

 remains still too much for a man at the Extreme of Life to finish." 

 Mr. Hemsley thinks this was written about 1785 : Bute died in 

 1792. 



Another small volume, of which I can find no trace in any 

 catalogue, is entitled A Tabular Distribution of British Plants ; 

 this is dated 1780, and does not appear to have been published. 

 It is a small quarto of 57 pages, of which pp. 3-23 are reprinted, 

 with slight alterations and additions, in the introduction to the 

 Botanical Tables. The classification, however, differs materially, 

 both in arrangement and in definitions, from that printed in the 

 pubHshed w^ork. There is no indication of authorship, on the 

 title-page nor elsewhere in the volume, which is lettered on the back 

 " Lord Bute on Botany." 



In connection with the Tables it may be interesting to give 

 some fuller account than is given in the Dictionary of National 

 Biography of a collection of drawings by John Miller which was 

 acquired by the Department of Botany in 1880 from Messrs. 



^ See Makers of Botany (" 1913," recte 1912), p. 103, 



