154 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



The second edition consisted of the original plates, with text 

 rewritten in great part by William Jackson Hooker, who occa- 

 sionally added H. to an entirely new paragraph. As regards the 

 original Curtisian figures ; these formed three volumes, with 

 title pages and four indexes to each : I. arranged in Linnean 

 sequence, II. in a " Natural Method," III. alphabetic ; and 

 IV. by English names in alphabetic sequence. At the same time 

 as this new edition of Curtis was brought out, a continuation was 

 in progress. Sir Joseph Hooker says : " This magnificent work 

 taxed my father's time and artistic skill for ten years. Owing 

 to incredible mismanagement on the part of the Editor [George 

 Graves] it never took the position in botanical literature which 

 the excellence of the descriptions and the beauty of the plates 

 merited. The main cause of this was that (as in the case of the 

 first edition) the plates not being numbered or referred to in the 

 letter-press, which itself was not paged, citation was impossible. 

 Furthermore, the title of the second edition was a misnomer ; 

 that of the first w^as ' Elora Londinensis, or Plates and Descriptions 

 of such Plants as grow wild in the Environs of London ' ; that of 

 the second is ' Elora Londinensis, containing a History of the 

 Plants indigenous to Great Britain.' Neither edition has either 

 Preface or Introduction, and the plates of the first bear no 

 artist's signature ; they are no doubt by William Curtis himself, 

 whose name on the title-page of the work is a guarantee for their 

 truth and beauty. The accompanying descriptions are meagre. 

 In the new edition the plates of vols, i-iii (443) [i. e. 434] " are 

 reprints from the coppers used in the first, and are of plants found 

 in the environs of London ; those of vols, iv and v are of plants 

 very few indeed of which are indigenous anywhere near London. 

 Of these . . . most, if not all, of them are from drawings by my 

 father. . . . The descriptions throughout the five volumes w^ere, 

 except those of the [five] plates signed E. K. Greville, I believe, 

 all written, enlarged, or rewritten by my father ; but his name 

 appears nowhere except on the title-pages of vols, iv and v, on 

 which are inserted the words ' The Botanical descriptions 

 arranged and corrected by W. J. Hooker,' words which apply to 

 the preceding four volumes. ... To conclude, this rare and 

 beautiful work was produced at great cost under financial 

 embarrassment of the Editor (Mr. Graves), and its end is probably 

 unique in the history of botanical works, — Chancery ! under 

 which I may add that the real author could hardly have been a 

 beneficiary." — Ann. Bot. xvi. (1902) pp. xcviii-xcix. 



The foregoing extract needs correction. The name of William 

 Kilburn, " artist and caHco-printer," appears on many plates 

 throughout the Curtisian portion. Thus, to take the first fascicu- 

 lus only, we find on twenty-four plates the legend, " Kilburn 

 pinxt. et sculpt.," one with " Kilburn pinxt.," six with his name, and 

 two with his initial " K" only. These names are mostly in dry- 

 point, and thus apt to be worn off the plate in the course of print- 

 ing. Later artists were E. Sansom and Sydenham Teast Edwards, 

 both as draughtsmen and as engravers. Then, too, the inscrip- 



