98 



NATURE 



{May ^o, 1889 



be done in intermediate schools. We hail the fact that 

 the Bill was read a second time as a sign that the public 

 are waking- up to the very great importance of this side of 

 the educational problem. 



FLORA ORIENTALIS. 

 Flora Orientalis, sive Enumeratio Plmitarum in Oriente 

 a Grcecia et AUgypto ad Indicz Fines hucusque Obser- 

 vatartim. Auctore Edmond Boissier. Supplementum, 

 editore R. Buser. (Geneva; et Basileas apud H. Georg, 

 Bibliopolam, 1888) 

 A BRIEF notice of the eminent author of the monu- 

 F\- mental work which the present volume brings to a 

 close appeared in Nature (vol. xxxii. p. 540), a day 

 or two after his decease, and it is there mentioned that 

 he had for some time been engaged on a supplement to 

 his " Flora Orientalis/' the body of which was com- 

 pleted in 1 881. That supplement is now fortunately in 

 the hands of botanists, and an opportunity is offered for 

 a more comprehensive notice of the author and his work, 

 as a whole, than has hitherto been published in this 

 country. Apart from the value of the work to the 

 systematist and phytogeographer, it possesses an interest 

 for a wide circle, inasmuch as it deals with the vegeta- 

 tion of those countries of the greatest historical attrac- 

 tions. As the title indicates, the eastern limit of the area 

 of the "Flora Orientalis" is India, and now there are 

 other works actually in progress, which, although they 

 will not by any means exhaust the flora of the rest of 

 Asia, will add vastly to what is known. Sir Joseph 

 Hooker's " Flora of British India" has reached the sixth 

 volume, and the indefatigable author is now engaged on 

 the Orchidese (the largest order in the British Indian 

 flora, represented by upwards of 1000 species) ; and 

 we may reasonably hope, now that he is free from 

 official duties, that he will finish it in the course of four 

 or five years. But the energy and perseverance required 

 to get through such an amount of descriptive botany as 

 that accomplished by such men as Bentham, Boissier, 

 and Hooker, can be estimated by few except those 

 similarly engaged. 



Kegel and Maximowicz's elaboration of the collec- 

 tions of Russian travellers in Central and Eastern Asia, 

 Franchet's " Plantae DavidiancE " and " Planta; Yunnan- 

 enses," and Forbes and Hemsley's "Index Florae 

 Sinensis," are jointly bringing together the materials for 

 a flora of Central Asia and China, so that it will soon be 

 possible to survey and analyze the composition of the 

 vegetation in its various aspects from the Atlantic across 

 Europe and Asia to the Pacific. 



The " Flora Orientalis " consists of five octavo volumes, 

 with an aggregate of 5387 pages, independently of the 

 present supplement of 499 pages, making a total of 5886 

 pages ; and, on the authority of Dr. H. Christ, the 

 author of a notice of the life and works of Boissier 

 appended to the supplement, the number of species 

 described amounts to 11,876 ! To these descriptions are 

 added the localities of the plants within the limits of the 

 " Flora," and the geographical area of each species. In 

 giving the former, the author takes the countries in the fol- 

 I owing order : Greece, Macedonia and Thrace, Asia Minor 

 and Armenia, Egypt and Arabia, Palestine, Syria, and 



Mesopotamia, Crimea and Caucasus, Persia, Turkestan, 

 Afghanistan and Baluchistan. 



Before proceeding to a further examination of the 

 nature and quality of Boissier's " Flora Orientalis," I will ex- 

 tract some particulars of his life from Dr. Christ's memoir,, 

 more especially such as relate to his botanical career. 



Pierre Edmond Boissier, a descendant of a Huguenot 

 family, was born at Geneva in 18 10, and early developed 

 a love for botanical pursuits. This inclination was stimu- 

 lated and cultivated by the eminent Augustine Pyramus 

 De Candolle, whose admirable teaching resulted in 

 Boissier's life-long devotion to botanical research. 

 Boissier was a man of great mental attainments, of a 

 most amiable disposition, and at the same time of noble 

 stature and fine physique. 



Botanizing in the field, which is undoubtedly the best 

 of all training, was his great delight, and his home 

 excursions subsequently extended into distant travels. 

 He was a good walker and a good mountaineer, and 

 retained his great physical power until quite late in life. 

 On his first visit to the Maritime Alps in 1832, he walked 

 the whole distance, some forty miles, from Nice ta 

 Tenda in a single journey, and as lately as 1871 he 

 accomplished in one day on foot the longer and much 

 more difficult journey from La Madone delle Finestre ta 

 Tenda. The distance is estimated at about forty-five 

 miles, and entails an ascent from 1900 to 2336 metres,, 

 then a descent to 1500 metres, upwards again to 2600, 

 and finally down to 750 metres. And this exertion was 

 undertaken to rediscover the rare and singular Saxifraga 

 florulenta, originally discovered by an English tourist. 

 This, Boissier's fourth excursion for this object, proved 

 successful. 



After finishing his studies at Geneva, Boissier went to 

 Paris, where he met with our countryman Philip Barker 

 Webb, who had botanized extensively in Spain, chiefly in 

 the Kingdom of Granada, though he had published almost 

 nothing thereon. It is supposed that Webb influenced 

 Boissier in his determination to make Spain the field of 

 his next botanical work, and it is certain that he gave hiri> 

 the whole of the materials he had collected, having him- 

 self made the Canary Islands the scene of his future 

 labours. Boissier went on his first voyage to Spain in 

 1836, and continued his investigations for several years, 

 aided more or less by several persons, and greatly by his 

 friend Renter. Following several preliminary contribu- 

 tions to the botany of Spain, the first part of Boissier's 

 " Voyage botanique dans le midi de I'Espagne " ap- 

 peared in 1839 ; and this admirable publication was 

 completed in 1845. It is a botanical work of the first 

 rank, and an enduring monument of the industry and muni- 

 ficence of the author. It consists of two quarto volumes 

 containing a most interesting narrative of his travels ; an 

 essay on the geographical distribution of the plants of the 

 region under consideration ; descriptions of all the plants, 

 and last, though by no means least, upwards of 200 

 beautifully drawn, hand-coloured plates by Heyland, one 

 of the most accomplished botanical artists of his time. 



Previous to the appearance of this work, the flora of 

 no country of Europe was so little known as that of 

 Spain. The enumeration numbers nearly 2000 species, 

 about one-eighth of which were previously unknown. 

 Since its appearance the flora of the whole of Spain has 



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