PREFACE. 
T seems hardly necessary to offer an apology for bringing out the 
present volume, considering that more than sixty years have 
elapsed since the publication of the only work dealing systematically 
with the flora of the Channel Islands,—Professor C. C. Babington’s 
Primitiae Florae Sarnicae. The researches of later botanists have 
' filled in many details which were only faintly outlined in that useful 
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little book ; while the cryptogamic flora, about which practically 
nothing was known in those early days, has received a fair measure 
of attention during recent times. 
The great bulk of the notes embodied in these pages were 
collected during my residence in Guernsey from 1888 to 1895 ; 
and, although the record is by no means complete, it will serve as a 
fresh starting-point for future workers, Py Showing Ag iy what has 
been done up to the present time. 
_ The plan adopted by Babington of enumerating under each 
plant all the different islands in which it is found, has not been 
followed on this occasion : because it seems to me that the botanical 
features of each island can be more clearly perceived when it is 
treated as an entirely separate area, possessing its own particular 
and distinctive flora. Botanists visiting this part of the kingdom 
will, I think, appreciate the advantage of the present arrangement. 
From the summary which is given at the end of the general 
Introduction, it will be seen that the various islands have not all 
been worked up to the same level of thoroughness, more especially 
in the case of the lower cryptogams. No difficulty, however, will be 
experienced in comparing any section of the flora of one island with 
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that of another, inasmuch as the botanical names and classification 
are the same throughout. 
The notes on etymology and plant-lore which are given in the 
© principal phanerogamic list will not be found to interfere with the 
strictly botanical portion of the work, and they may perchance 
interest those lovers of wild flowers who do not confine their studies 
Y) merely to the dry bones of science. Some of the Norman plant- 
\/ names still current among the peasantry of Guernsey are extremely 
curious, as well as ancient, and they certainly deserve to be rescued 
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BOTAI 
