896 



Ibbotson's Catalogue is far advanced towards completion. We thus 

 have, or shortly may have, three very fidl lists of British plants ; each 

 bearing some feature which is not found in the other two. And it 

 seems almost needless to say that the discovery of any species at all 

 wild in the British Isles, which is not enumerated in the above lists, 

 would be a fact highly worthy of public announcement and record. 

 Many species are mentioned in the Manual, as likely to be found in 

 Britain, and some of which are conjectured to have been seen, al- 

 though not certainly ascertained. Attention is thus directed towards 

 points which it is desirable to investigate and ascertain. And, by 

 giving a census of the species, the 'London Catalogue,' in its turn, is 

 drawing attention to those species, the scarcity of which renders the 

 discovery and record of all their localities so much the more desirable. 

 These are finger-posts to guide the botanical traveller. 



In recording localities, as above intimated, there is always a 

 chance, usually a probability, that we are only again putting on re- 

 cord the selfsame facts which had been before ascertained and re- 

 corded. To keep clear from this impertinent egotism in science, it 

 would be well to take the trouble of first inquiring whether the same 

 facts have, or have not, been already placed on record by others. 

 The Botanist's Guides offer a ready resource here, and afford a pass- 

 ably safe test. In many instances, a still better may be found in 

 some local Flora for the county or tract within which the supposed 

 new localities are situate. If not found on record either in the ap- 

 propriate Flora or in the Guides, the publication of such localities 

 would be quite excusable, even though it might prove to be only a 

 re-publication, though an earlier record in some less likely work. 



The use of local Floras may sometimes lead to the preservation 

 of facts doubly useful and worthy of record, and which might be neg- 

 lected and lost by those who failed to examine such works. Includ- 

 ing some catalogues in the periodicals, together with those pubhshed 

 separately as local Floras, there are now about forty printed lists of 

 plants which profess to include all the known species of the several 

 counties or other tracts to which they refer respectively. In these 

 lists, consequently, we have the negative as well as positive evidence 

 to work upon ; for any species which is not enumerated in the appro- 

 priate Flora, is reasonably enough presumed to be absent from the 

 corresponding tract of country. In divers instances, however, these 

 lists have been hastily published, that is, before their authors had 

 fully examined the tracts to which they relate ; and they may thus 

 mislead by "the imperfect state of their negative evidence. Any 



