204 THE NATTJllAL IIISTORT REVIEW. 



approbation wliich we can fully endorse from personal experience. 

 In the eighteenth century the Linnean nomenclature was first applied 

 to the Montpellier Flora, by Nathhorst, in a dissertation, entitled, 

 "Flora Monspeliensis," maintained inUpsala under the presidency of 

 Linnaeus, but which is a mere catalogue of species. And during the 

 whole of the latter half of that century and the first years of the 

 present one, the botanical sceptre at Montpellier was in the hands of 

 the celebrated Grouan, the steady and favoured correspondent of 

 Linnaeus, whose devotion to the science only increased with age, and 

 whom we still remember, some years above 80, and perfectly blind, 

 yet enjoying nothing more than being led to feel his favourite trees 

 and plants. His regular herborisations were attended, amongst 

 other pupils, by Commerson, Dombey, Bruguiere, Olivier, E-iche, and 

 Labillardiere, and his several works on the surrounding Flora, 

 embodying most valuable information, are well known to all northern 

 botanists, although, as observed by Planchon, they must be used 

 with caution, for they are far from possessing the reliable precision of 

 Magnol's little book. Stations are occasionally set down from 

 memory, subalpine plants from the Cevennes are sometimes con- 

 founded with the low vegetation of the plains, and thus facts met 

 with in Gouan's works which may appear startling, cannot be 

 admitted without confirmation from other observers. 



Since Gouan's time no special work on the Montpellier Flora has 

 appeared, but De CandoUe and Delile, who respectively occupied the 

 botanical chair, Duval, Salzmann, Eoubieu, Pouzin, Bouchet- 

 Doumenq, Cambessedes, etc., besides numerous botanists yet living, 

 have amassed extensive materials or published numerous notes scat- 

 tered through their works, from which very accurate details of the 

 present vegetation of the country may be obtained. Gouan and 

 Amoreux have left detailed lists of the exotic plants they attempted 

 to introduce, chiefly by sowing, in the last century, and in the present 

 one, the adventitious plants which spring up at the Port Juvenal, the 

 place where foreign wools are landed and washed, first adverted to in 

 the supplemental volume of De Candolle's Flore Francaise, have 

 more especially occupied the attention of Delile, Touchy, Godron, 

 Cosson, Lespinasse, and others. These and other sources from 

 which Dr. Planchon, independently of personal observation, has 

 collected his facts, are critically reviewed in a preliminary intro- 

 duction. 



In sketching out the plan of his work Dr. Planchon distinguishes 

 two questions, the research into the facts observed relating to the 



