NA TURE 



325 



THURSDAY, JULY 25, 1878 



BOTANY IN AMERICA 



Synoptical Flora of North America. By Asa Gray, 

 LL.D., Fisher Professor of Natural History (Botany) 

 in Har\'ard University. Vol. ii. Part i. (New York, 

 1878.) 



Bibliographical Index to North American Botany, with 

 a Chronological Arrafigement of the Synonymy. By 

 Serene Watson. Part i. Polypetalae. (Washington, 

 1878.) 



AS with the British nation, so with the American, the 

 rapid extension of its territorial boundaries, and 

 absorption of outlying regions abounding in new and 

 interesting forms of life, has determined to a great extent 

 the direction and progress of the natural history sciences 

 which it cultivates. 



The first requisite of the explorer who brings back 

 with him collections illustrative of the new or little- 

 known countries he has visited is to know what these 

 are ; and the emigrant and colonist who follows the 

 explorer makes the further demand upon the naturalist of 

 the means of ascertaining the names and relationships of 

 the useful, ornamental, noxious, or otherwise remarkable 

 plants of his new home. 



Hence the more rapid strides of classificatory and 

 descriptive botany in England and America than in any 

 other countries, the multiplicity of botanical appendices to 

 narratives of voyages, travels, surveys, and explorations ; 

 and those libraries of local and general floras which have 

 contributed so largely to our knowledge of the vegetable 

 world. In this respect, namely, the accession of new 

 domains, America and England have no rival but Russia, 

 and in her case the newly-acquired or explored territories 

 have in many cases, from the scantiness of their floras, 

 yielded comparatively little of botanical interest. France, 

 indeed, during the last decade of the past and first of the 

 present centuries, displayed remarkable activity in this 

 direction, stimulated thereto by the genius and activity 

 of Richard, De Candolle, St. Hilaire, and many other 

 botanists, and by the accumulation of collections brought 

 by her naval expeditions and geographical explorations; 

 but latterly she has left the field to the Anglo-Saxon ; 

 and her publications relating to the botany of her later 

 voyages are too often ambitious failures, ouvrages 

 de luxe; abandoned and left incomplete after the first 

 few parts have dazzled the scientific world by their size 

 and beautifully executed plates; whilst of her latest and 

 most splendid territorial acquisition, Algeria, we must 

 go to the work of an Englishman (Munby) for even a 

 catalogue of its botanical riches. 



America, on the other hand has gone about her work 

 of this kind in an eminently practical fashion. Most of 

 her local floras, and they are very numerous, are ex- 

 ceedingly well done, and complete up to their date of pub- 

 lication, whilst the botanical collections made during her 

 almost innumerable topographical, geological, boundary, 

 and railroad surveys have been published with a com- 

 pleteness and accuracy that leave little to be desired ; 

 and these hence form most valuable contributions not only 

 to systematic but to geographical botany. 

 Vol. xviii. — No. 456 



Of the contributors to this branch of botanical litera- 

 ture in America none is entitled to take rank with Prof. 

 Asa Gray, of Harvard, Massachusetts, whether in respect 

 of the amount of labour undertaken, or the treatment of 

 it ; and there is certainly no living botanist whose work 

 has better stood the test of time and subsequent scrutiny, 

 or who has turned his materials to better account in 

 dealing with problems of classification and geographical 

 distribution. 



One circumstance alone has stood in the way of the 

 recognition of the merits of this class of work, which is 

 the fragmentary character of most of it, and the fact 

 that so much of it has appeared as appendices and sup- 

 plements to ponderous volumes descriptive of territorial 

 and other surveys, which have necessarily a limited cir- 

 culation, and whose titles are unfamiliar to scientific 

 inquirers. 



It has long been felt that there was but one way of 

 satisfactorily dealing with the mass of materials of this 

 nature that had been accumulating in the United States 

 for now thirty-five years, and this was the resumption 

 by the surviving author of Torrey and Gray's " Flora of 

 North America," which was begun in 1838, and of which 

 the last part, embracing the Composites, was published 

 in 1843. Happily the surviving author has not been 

 allowed to lose sight of the fact, that to him alone would 

 botanists look with confidence for its satisfactory com- 

 pletion, and he has consequently been in the habit of so 

 working up the materials confided to him for publication 

 from the numerous expeditions alluded to and from private 

 sources, that these should be directly available for the 

 final effort to complete the American flora. 



In commencing this, two courses were open to Dr. Gray : 

 to re-edit, with additions, the antiquated volumes already 

 published and continue onwards, or to begin where the 

 old work ended, and re-edit afterwards the previously 

 published ones. Dr. Gray has chosen the latter course, 

 and, we doubt not, wisely ; it leaves the lighter task for 

 the future. It also more quickly meets the necessary 

 wants of botanists, for the first volumes are, to a very 

 important extent, supplemented by Sereno Watson's 

 "Bibliographical Index to North American Botany," 

 which gives references to all the genera and species added 

 to the American flora since 1843, as well to those published 

 up to that time. 



In various other respects, also, the model of the old 

 flora of North America has been advantageously de- 

 parted from ; a new title, of " Synoptical Flora of North 

 America," has been adopted ; the pages are larger and 

 the type smaller (though still beautifully clear)'; synopti- 

 cal tables of the genera are introduced under each order ; 

 and the synonomy and references have been greatly 

 reduced, these being supplied by Watson's above-men- 

 tioned bibliography. 



The work embraces all the regions of America belong- 

 ing to the United States and Great Britain, thus excluding 

 Greenland, the flora of which is more European than 

 American. The partnowpublished contains 400 pages, and 

 embraces thirty-two Gamopetalous orders (from Goode- 

 niaceas to the end of that division of Dicotyledons) accord- 

 ing to the sequence of Bentham and Hooker's " Genera* 

 Plantarum," the limitation of orders in which work is 

 closely followed. The orders include 321 genera and 



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