LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. lxxv 
Monocotyledons and Apetale. The south-eastern peninsula of 
Europe, comprising Greece and Turkey, has still less means of 
publishing indigenous Floras, The Austrian portion alone has 
been well investigated and illustrated by Visiani’s excellent Flora 
Dalmatica; what we know of the remainder has been due to the 
works of British, German, or French botanists, none of which are 
sufficiently recent or comprehensive to be here mentioned. The 
flora of the Levant, which, although technically a part of Asia, is in 
its natural productions so closely connected with southern Europe, 
and so particularly interesting as the country from which or through 
which so many early cultivated plants had proceeded, had, since the 
days of Tournefort, been little investigated until taken in hand 
by Boissier, who is preparing a general Flora Orientalis, in 
which it is hoped he will condense, and in some instances re- 
form, the very numerous species described by himself and others. 
In the meantime, M. de Tchihatcheff has published a very useful 
general summary under the title of Elémens d’une Flore de I’Asie 
Mineure. 
Beyond the limits of Europe, I may first refer to our own Colonies. 
A general summary of the steps taken to procure a uniform set of 
these floras was inserted, by Dr. Hooker, in the Natural History 
Review for July last, and I have only now to report progress. 
The fifth part, recently issued, of Grisebach’s Flora of the British 
West India Islands has brought it down to the commencement of 
Monocotyledons; the fourth part of Thwaites’s Enumeration of 
Ceylon Plants goes far into Monocotyledons ; and each of these com- 
pact but comprehensive works will, it is hoped, be very shortly 
completed by the issue of one more part. The printing of the second 
volume of Harvey and Sonder’s Flora Capensis, comprising Legu- 
minose and Calyciflore, is nearly finished. Our Indian botanists 
have been active, as evidenced by the Precursores Flore Indice 
of Drs. Hooker and Thomson, the Flora Adenensis of Dr. T, Ander- 
son, Mr. Edgeworth’s Account of Punjab Plants, and other papers 
communicated to our Society; and although, some years since, an 
excellent opportunity for giving to the world a really good Flora of 
that rich and varied territory—more wanted, for a variety of pur- 
poses, than any other botanical work—was lost by an ill-advised 
want of liberality on the part of the then East India Company, I 
have now strong hopes that the present Indian Government will at 
length make such arrangement as will enable Dr. Hooker to lay be- 
fore the scientific and industrial public, in the shape of a compen- 
dious Flora Indica, the results of his own important labours and 
