PREFACE. 



To comply with established practice^ and to fill an idle page, a 

 preamble is required, rather by the necessities of the printer than 

 by the readers or by the Editor. The Annual Address to our 

 constituents has superseded the usual prefatory announcements, 

 and has reduced this Preface to one of the expected customary 

 formalities. 



Our friends will see from our List of Contributors that our 

 circle of correspondents is enlarged, and from our Index, that 

 the variety and usefulness of the matter which constitutes this 

 Volume, are not diminished ; and our hope is that the contents 

 of this new annual of British Phytology may prove as pleasant 

 to the readers as they have been to the authors. 



The summary or results, as usual, introduce the first number 

 of our next or Fifth Volume, and a pretty confident expectation 

 is expressed that the next year's ' Phytologist ' will not be sur- 

 passed by its predecessor. 



Note. — We have been repeatedly reminded that West Derby 

 is near Liverpool, and the reviewer of the ' Species Filicum' has 

 again been brought to book for his supposed ignorance of this 

 fact. But the truth is that our reviewer did not see West Derby 

 in the copy of the above-named work, because it is not there, 

 but he saw West Derbyshire, which is there : and he very inno- 

 cently corrected the geographical mistake. 



The learned author of the ' Species Filicum/ whose topogra- 



