m 



Botanical Literature, Old and New. 



V. 



Florida Boslorn'ensis. A Collection of the Plants 

 of Boston a?id its Vicinity, ivith their Generic and 

 Specific Characters, Principal Synonyms, De- 

 scriptions, Places of Groiuth^ Tinte of Floxver- 

 ino-^ and Occasional Remarks. By Jacob Bigelow, 

 M. D., Professor in Harvard University. * * Second 

 Edition. * * Boston, 1824. 



Rather more than a century Las passed since the beginning 

 of botanical book-making in North America. Of various local 

 aud general floras the century has yielded perhaps some sixty 

 editions, by about half as many authors. Two of those authors 

 gave us thoroughly good books about plants— really excellent 

 works of descriptive botany ; and we have no more. Both of 

 them are now old books. Bigelow's Florula Bostoniensis is 

 one of them. Darlington's Flora Cestrica is the other. We 

 iiave in America no other systematic treatises on plants which 

 make any near approach to these in point of fulness and accu- 

 racy of description ; no others which like these breathe odors 

 of meadow and woodland and prove their authors to have been 

 on terms of affectionate familiarity with the living subjects 



of description and comment. 



Dr. Bigelow tells us in his Preface that when the writing 

 of this Flora was first decided npon, he and his botanical 

 fnend aud companion, Dr. Boott, betook themselves at once 

 to the fields--began a succession of journeys for the special 

 study of the vegetation of the region. These researches hay- 

 ing been made, the first edition of the Florula Bostoniensis 

 ^as published in 1914. Of the second and ten years later 

 edition the author says : "Many of the former d* .■,criptions 



