1859.] ADDRESS or THE EDITOR. 13 



' Geographic Botanique.^ While we direct the reader's attention 

 to this useful resume, we do not advise them implicitly to adopt 

 the results or statements of the eminent botanical geographer. 

 They will^ however, rely more on their own observations than 

 on the theoretical deductions of the learned Professor, 



Investigators will see that although our Flora has received nu- 

 merous and important additions from foreign parts, both Euro- 

 pean and extra-European, yet that the great majority of new 

 plants, entered as of spontaneous British growth, since the times 

 of Ray and his contemporaries, consists rather in the separation 

 of supposed species, or splitting, as some irreverently name this 

 practice of modern botanists. Probably we have received from 

 distant lands one hundred species, now naturalized, or generally 

 reported as of British spontaneous origin (growth) : but we have 

 now (1859) about eight hundred plants not in Ray's ^Catalogus 

 Plantarum Anglise.' Whence have we got these ? Were they 

 all overlooked by Ray and his keen-eyed contemporaries ? Sup- 

 posing that we have given a home to a hundred aliens, whence 

 have we obtained the remaining seven hundred new species? 

 Probably the history of many or several of what we have flat- 

 tered ourselves were genuine species, may be more instructive to 

 our successors than flattering to ourselves. . Some of these new 

 comers are probably destined to " dumb forgetfulness," to be 

 lost in oblivion, quia sacro vate carent. They do not deserve a 

 divine poet to celebrate their virtues and to sing the celebri- 

 ties of their uneventful lives. But we may learn something from 

 the short and simple annals of these inglorious innocents M^ho 

 are now and then remorselessly sacrificed to appease the lumping 

 portion of the amiable fraternity, as they are termed derisively 

 by their species-splitting brethren. 



The Editor, however, respectfully reminds the amiable corre- 

 spondent who so liberally offers the result of his observations on 

 this subject, — the condensed summary of what he has seen of the 

 vegetable kingdom, in Europe, Asia, and the far west, during a 

 quarter of a century, — that " life is short and art is long," — brevis 

 vita, ars longa est. It is possible for an author to exhaust 

 himself while attempting to exhaust his subject ; and it is not 

 very improbable that the patience of the reader may be ex- 

 hausted, before the writer has accomplished the exhaustion either 

 of himself or of his subject. The exhaustive process^ like some 



