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mittee ot the Edinburgh Society. I have next to mention another 

 disadvantage which is strongly felt by many of those botanists who 

 wish to keep up their knowledge of anything done or discovered in 

 British Botany. Papers on this subject are sent to the Edinburgh 

 Society. They are transmitted thence for insertion in the ' Annals 

 of Natural History,' provided, I may presume, they chance to meet 

 the approbation of the part-editor of that periodical who looks to the 

 botanical department. Readers who desire to see these botanical 

 papers, must therefor eprocure the 'Annals,' the cost of which is thirty 

 shillings a year. Doubtless that is a well-conducted and valuable 

 periodical, but the larger part of it being devoted to other subjects 

 than Botany, any one who buys it for papers on British Botany, trans- 

 mitted from the Edinburgh Society, must pay about six times the 

 actual value of its botanical pages. Should a botanist decline to pay 

 this high price, he may procure the same pages, two or three years, 

 after, under the name of ' Transactions,' that is, the periodical arti- 

 cles of 1843 and 1844, may be bought collected as 'Transactions,' 

 m 1845, — when their novelty is no more, and much of their interest 

 or usefulness has evaporated under the rays of improved knowledge. 



It is not alone in the Annals, that papers on British Botany are lost 

 to many botanical eyes, through being dispersed amid a large quantity 

 of more miscellaneous matter. Such papers are occasionally sent by 

 their authors direct to other similarly comprehensive periodicals ; the 

 general result being, that we, residents in the country, must expend 

 many pounds annually, before we can feel assured that all the current 

 contributions to British Botany are likely to come under our eyes. I 

 consider and feel this to be a great disadvantage. As a class, bota- 

 nists are not those men of wealth and leisure, to whom money and 

 time are, as the saying runs, " no object." On the contrary, I take it, 

 that most of those who feel really interested in the progress of British 

 Botany, would like well enough to find some one periodical becom- 

 ing, as nearly as possible, a complete record and index of all that is 

 done or discovered in British Botany, and which would still be 

 brought within the reach of purses lightly filled. 



To accomplish this, the periodical must be devoted exclusively to 

 the Botany of the British Isles. It must be published at a moderate 

 price ; and the editor must himself take some pains to render it com- 

 plete, as far as the progress of British Botany is concerned. On the 

 other side, English botanists should send thereto as many of their 

 contributions as they could compress into a moderate space ; ab- 

 stracts of all such papers as they might prefer to print in the larger 



