HISTORICAL SKETCH. 3 



English Flora he quotes Hall's paper as one with whicli 

 he had no personal acquaintance. In the year 1815 j\Ir 

 George Anderson gave in the Lhinean Trcuisactions a full 

 descrii)tion of what is usually supposed to have been Hall's 

 plant under the fixr better name of R. suherectus ; properly 

 taking advantage of the fact that its first publisher fur- 

 nished a very insufficient account of it, to replace the 

 original name by one which avoids the great objection of 

 being derived from that of a locality of very limited extent. 

 Remarks upon Hall's plant will be found under R, suherectus 

 in this book. 



Before the appearance of the second volume of Smith's 

 ETUjlish Flora (1824) only a portion of the great work of 

 Weihe and Nees von Esenbech on the German Ruhi had 

 been published, and Sir James expressed his grief that he 

 was thus prevented from availing himself to a greater extent 

 of the labours of those celebrated botanists. In the English 

 Flora Smith describes eleven fruticose species; a great in- 

 crease from the four recognised in his Flora Britannica. 

 These plants are (1) R. fruticosus^ which we now call R. 

 discolor; (2) R. plicatus; (3) R. rhamnifoliusj wdiich in- 

 cludes the R. cordifolius of Weihe and Nees; (4) R. leuco- 

 stachijs ; (5) R. glandulosus, now shown to be typically the 

 R. Koehleri of Weihe, although it probably included some 

 other glandular brambles; (6) A*, nitidus, which Borrer states 

 in the Supplement to English Botany (fol. 2714) to be the 

 R. jylicatus of the Ruhi Gernumici, at the same time inform- 

 ing us that " The specimens from Dr Williams, described 

 in the English Flora as R. j^Hcatus, bear a close resemblance 

 to 7?. rhamnifolius, and probably belong to it;" (7) R. affinis, 

 which Borrer and the late Mr Edw. Forster (Suppl. to 

 ^ng. Bot. f. 2G05) unhesitatingly refer to R, pallidus of 



