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is to achieve dissimilarity. And yet amid all this diversity how very 

 little can we find either of originality of thought or of genuine novelty 

 of treatment in these works ! Old forms and ideas are reproduced in 

 different combinations, insuring the disadvantages of change, without 

 the compensation of improvement. 



The explanation of this state of matters, we take it, will be found in 

 the narrow notions with which the authors of most of our local floras 

 have set about their tasks. Few of them appear to have ever con- 

 ceived the idea for themselves, or even to have imbibed it on 'the 

 suggestion of more comprehensive thinkers, that a local flora should 

 be also a sectional flora, — that it should be not only a small whole in 

 its local uses and purposes, but also a part of something larger and 

 wider, and such a part as might be united uniformly and congruously 

 with the other parts into the one greater whole. So far from these two 

 objects being incompatible, or difficult to combine in a single work, 

 it seems to be a non-apprehension or non-appreciation of their related 

 fitness, on the part of authors, which has given so much of the chance- 

 medley diversity to the published local floras. The works of this 

 class have hitherto been simply collections of facts, or what were sup- 

 posed to be facts ; and these facts having been seldom recorded with 

 any ultimate aim or object beyond the mere record, they have natu- 

 rally assumed the local character in its narrowest sense, that of petty 

 and isolated individualities. 



The essential requisites in a local flora may be shortly summed up 

 as follows. 1st, it should relate to a definite area, such as a single 

 county or section of a county, which has been well and carefully ex- 

 amined by the author of the flora himself, and the physical features of 

 which ought to be briefly described in his work. 2ndly, a full list of 

 the species which have been ascertained to grow wild within the area 

 fixed upon, invariably and clearly distinguishing from the rest, by dif- 

 ference of type or marks and suitable explanations, all those about 

 which there may be any uncertainty of any kind. 3rdly, the times of 

 flowering of the species, their usual situations of growth, and their 

 comparative frequency or rarity,— all given from actual observation 

 within the area under consideration, and not transcribed from other 

 publications which relate to a different or more extended tract of 

 country. 4thly, the localities of the less common species, more or 

 less minutely described, as circumstances may render needful in the 

 particular cases; but always with the authority for any locality which 

 does not rest upon the eyes of the author himself; as also with a dis- 

 tinction between those localities which are given on report solely, and 



