244 ON A NEW PINAX OR INDEX OF BKITISH PLANTS. [AugUSt, 



satisfactory manner than any other botanist who has not made 

 this subject of comparative nomenclature one of his pet studies. 



The design of this suggestive note is to explain the writer's 

 views about the compilation of a catalogue suited to the wants of 

 students, and worthy of the increased and still advancing intelli- 

 gence of the age; but not to criticize sharply the existing lists, 

 which in their time have been very useful. But as it would be 

 impracticable to explain to the reader the object of this paper, 

 without contrasting the proposed Index with the lists already 

 existing, their defects will be incidentally noticed, not with the 

 view of blaming their authors, who have done their best, but 

 to show a way of doing the same thing in a more serviceable 

 manner. 



The radical defect of the London Catalogue is its one-sidedness 

 or partiality ; and on the principles which regulated its compila- 

 tion this was unavoidable. The author in this, as in all his other 

 works, lost his reckoning, or missed a loop in his stocking and 

 grounded or got himself entangled as in a ravelled hasp about 

 native plants, spontaneous plants, plants that are certainly alien, 

 and plants that are only suspected. Hence there are three lists of 

 excluded species, viz. 1st, such as are sometimes found of sponta- 

 neous growth; 2nd, such as (in the author's judgment) ought 

 never to have figured in any list of British plants ; and 3rd, the 

 extinct plants. Hoav many botanists, well acquainted with the 

 plants of Great Britain, will agree about the plants which should 

 be classified under these three heads ? 



Again, the various expedients adopted to express the author's 

 opinion about the nativity or non-nativity of the species in the 

 body of the catalogue are, to say tlie very least, unsatisfac- 

 tory ; viz. the star, the dagger, the italics, the brackets, thus : — 

 •^t P- somniferum ( ). They are only the expressions of his indivi- 

 dual belief, but are not binding on other observers, whose bota- 

 nical creed may not be so limited as his. 



As my design is to show how these defects may be supplied, and 

 these blemishes and contradictious avoided, and not to blame 

 what is admitted to be unavoidable on the principles adopted as 

 fundamental, I will now explain what is the proposed scheme of 

 a catalogue of the British plants. 



A systematical and critical catalogue, which the London Cata- 

 logue professes to be, should, and easily might, be compiled so as 



