268 TRANSACTIONS AND PKOCKEDINGS OF THE [Sess. lxvii. 



The districts and their local sub-divisions employed in 

 the records of topographical botany in Scotland have varied 

 considerably, and it is not always easy to correlate them 

 so as to make the older ones of use for comparison with 

 the more recent. Yet a good deal is lost if such com- 

 parisons cannot be made. 



In the earliest works, e.g. Sibbald's " Scotia Illustrata " 

 (1684), the topographical information amounts to the 

 notification of the species believed by the author to exist 

 in Scotland, with special localities noted for a few. 

 Lightfoot's "Flora Scotica " (1778), and Hooker's "Flora 

 Scotica " (1821), proceed on almost the same lines. They 

 do not attempt to indicate the local distribution of species 

 in Scotland except by enumeration of localities for the 

 rarer and local forms. 



Of the local floras, some of the earlier limit themselves 

 to some distance around a town as a centre, without 

 limitation to, or indication of, special districts, whether 

 natural, such as river basins, or artificial, such as counties 

 and parishes. Of this class are Greville's, Balfour and 

 Sadler's, and Sonntag's floras of the district around Edin- 

 burgh, Dickie's " Flora Aberdonensis," and P. Macgillivray's 

 " Flora of Aberdeen." Others, e.g. Edmonston's " Shetland 

 Flora," and Kennedy's " Clydesdale Flora," relate to natural 

 areas, but with no systematic sub-division of the areas ; 

 and others limit themselves to political districts, such as 

 Johnston's " Botany of the Scottish Borders " and " Flora 

 of Berwick-on-Tweed," Dickie's " Botanist's Guide to the 

 Counties of Aberdeen, Banff, and Kincardine," and Scott 

 Elliott's " Flora of Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, and Wigtown." 

 White's " Flora of Perthshire " is limited to the political 

 area Perthshire and Clackmannan ; but that area is chiefly 

 the Tay basin, and is, in so far, natural, and it has been 

 sub-divided in the " Flora " by river basins and geological 

 formations. Thus the two methods are combined in this 

 case. 



Mr. H. C. Watson's works on the topographical botany 

 of Great Britain added so greatly to the information 

 available to local botanists, and to the precision and 

 accuracy of that information by his careful analysis of 

 earlier work, that his divisions of counties and vice- 



