462 



cal Floras ; and certainly with no diminished satisfaction do we now 

 see it brought to completion by the publication of Part IV. The at- 

 tention of our readers is again drawn towards the work, because we 

 desire earnestly that it should become generally known to all who 

 may be likely to write on local botany for the press. We have called 

 it a valuable addition to the local Floras previously published ; but it 

 is more than this : it is a new starting-point, behind which its succes- 

 sors cannot lag, without being rendered amenable to unfavourable 

 comparisons. Hitherto, a local Flora has usually come before the 

 public under false pretences ; professing to be what it was not. The 

 Flora of a county, for example, has commonly included a pretty 

 complete list of species and localities for a small part of its county, 

 namely, that immediately surrounding the dwelling-place of the au- 

 thor ; interspersed with an imperfect list of species and localities for 

 all the rest of the much wider area which it professed to embrace ; 

 the indications of frequency or infrequency, in like manner, being 

 founded upon equally limited and imperfect research, although ap- 

 plied to the whole county. Nor have these defects been characteris- 

 tic only of Floras ostensibly embracing whole counties or other 

 equally wide spaces ; for some of the most imperfect and hastily got 

 up Floras have related to small circuits around provincial towns, 

 most superficially and partially examined by the authors. 



We must admit that such defects, arising from incomplete or un- 

 equal examination of the area embraced in a publication on local 

 botany, cannot be wholly avoided. Nor is the ' Flora Hertfordiensis' 

 itself altogether free from them ; certain portions of the county 

 having evidently and confessedly been much less thoroughly investi- 

 gated than others. Two obvious correctives present themselves, in 

 the way of remedies or guards to prevent misinformation being thus 

 given ; and both of these appear in the ' Flora Hertfordiensis.' The 

 one, is that of limiting a Flora to the space which has been actually 

 and thoroughly examined ; the other, that of distinguishing the well- 

 investigated from the ill-investigated portions of the whole space. 

 In the Flora now under view, the county is divided into three princi- 

 pal divisions, and these again into twelve subordinate sections. And 

 as the species are severally traced through each division and section, 

 so far as ascertained to occur in them, with a tabular summary of the 

 numerical results, we gain an amount of positive information, and a 

 probable test of negative information, such as we should vainly en- 

 deavour to extract from any other local Flora, written in the ordinary 

 method. The ' Flora Hertfordiensis,' in truth, is far more than a 



