NEW PUBLICATIONS. 217 
The London Catalogue of British Plants. Published under the direction 
of the London Botanical Exchange Club. Sixth Edition. London : 
Hardwicke. 1867. 
A complete Catalogue of the plants of any country gives much more 
information than might be at first imagined ; in proportion to the 
knowledge, judgment, and capability of the compiler or compilers, it 
will be a true and accurate exposition of the existing state of Botanical 
science in the country. This is especially the case when it can be com- 
pared with similar catalogues of an earlier date, as in such cases the 
progress of the science can be also traced. The novelties and recently 
discriminated plants being entered, the nomenclature and arrangement 
unproved, and all carefully revised, the list becomes an epitome of all 
that has been done in the interval between its appearance and that of 
its predecessor, and an index of the progress made. 
I he present Catalogue is the sixth edition of that which has been for 
More than twenty years the recognized list of British Plants by which 
the working botanists of this country have been accustomed to arrange 
and label their specimens. The new edition will doubtless maintain the 
same position, and is decidedly an advance on any of its predecessors. 
Ten years have elapsed since the fifth edition of this Catalogue was 
published, and during that time the progress of British Botany has 
been very great. A large amount of new matter is embodied in Mr. 
s yme's new < English Botany,' and we are told that the present Cata- 
logue may be received as the old list "partially adapted " to this 
important work. 
Though the progress of ten years is on the whole well expressed in 
the hst before us, this is less apparent than it might be, in consequence, 
** it seems to us, of the retention of a feature of the old Catalogue, 
*Mch should have been either omitted or remodelled. We allude to 
the old series of numbers prefixed to the species. Originally, in the 
rst edition, this was a perfectly consecutive series of numbers from 1 
to 1428; but as years have passed, " species" have been "lumped" 
an <* "split," new plants have been found, and old ones excluded, and 
these changes have on the one hand made gaps in the series, and on 
the other have caused many species to bear the same number, and thus 
the series has become very uneven. As long as the Catalogue remained 
faltered in arrangement, the sequence of species being the same, this 
