768 



and its perversion, by men incapable of appreciating or using it, 

 does not militate against the scheme itself. 



In opposition to the experience of Professor Lindley, who " was 

 driven to seek refuge in the natural system from the difficulties 

 and inconsistencies of the Linnsean," we could proudly point to names 

 the greatest in the annals of the science, who trode in the steps of the 

 Upsal Professor, — to Thunberg and Solander, to Banks and Wood- 

 ward, to Smith and Hooker, and hundreds of others, both in this and 

 every other country, who, under the banner of Linnaeus, have been 

 the principal means of raising Botany to her present station among 

 the sciences. 



The above are a few brief and meager notes on a very important 

 and fruitful theme, and one on which I could have wished to enlarge 

 more than my limits would permit. I hope, at no very distant pe.riod, 

 again to recur to it in another form, when my reasons for entertaining 

 the views here expressed will be more fully illustrated ; but in the 

 mean time if these remarks can only induce botanists to examine the 

 merits of the two systems carefully and impartially for themselves, I 

 am persuaded they will, in most instances, come to the same conclu- 

 sion that I have done. Thos. Edmonston, jun. 



Art. CLXXVII. — Noiice of a vew British Calamintha, discovered 

 in, the Isle of Wight. By Wm. Arnold Bromfield, Esq., M.D. 



I HAVE great pleasure in announcing, through your pages, the dis- 

 covery by myself, on the 29th of August last, of a Calamintha, which 

 will probably prove to be the true C. officinalis of the continental bo- 

 tanists, and is now in full flower. It is in a beautiful and pictu- 

 resquely wooded valley between Apes down and Rowledge, about 

 three miles and a half from Newport towards Yarmouth in this island, 

 that this fine addition to the Labiatae of Britain grows in the greatest 

 profusion and luxuriance, and I have no doubt as truly indigenous as 

 the common Origanum vulgare and Clinopodium that accompany it, 

 and which it even surpasses in abundance. Leaving Newport by the 

 lower or southern A^armouth road through Carisbrooke and Calbourne, 

 and a little before arriving at Swainston, the seat of my friend Sir Ri- 

 chard Simeon, Bart., on whose estate the plant grows, you come to a 

 farm house (Apes down) by the road side, and situated at the north- 

 ern termination of the valley alluded to. Nearly opposite this farm, 



