Vlii PREFACE. 



tiges. Whether it was owing to the rebuff which poor Sibbald 

 experienced ; or to the unsettled state of the country, little quali- 

 fied to encourage scientific pursuits ; or to any other cause ; no 

 further attempt appears to have been made to illustrate the ve- 

 getables of Scotland, till the appearance of the Flora Scotica of 

 Lightfoot, in the latter half of the last century; a publication soon 

 followed by Two lists of plants lately discovered in Scotland ly 

 Mr. Dickson; the one communicated to the Linnean Society, the 

 other printed in his own 2d fasciculus of Cryptogamous Vegetables. 

 At a subsequent period, the late indefatigable George Don made 

 many, and in certain instances very unexpected, additions to the 

 Scotch Flora, the greater part of which he published through the 

 medium of Smith's Flora Britannica, orSowerby's English Bo- 

 tany; but some of them are to be found in his own fasciculi of 

 Dried Plants. In times more immediately our own, Mr. Hop- 

 kirk of Glasgow, the founder of our Botanic Garden, has made a 

 more important contribution to the Natural History of Scotland, 

 by the publication of his Flora Glvltiana\ but still, with the 

 exception of Lightfoot's work, none has yet appeared professing 

 to be a complete Flora of the country north of the Tweed. It 

 will be observed that, in making this remark, I speak only of a 

 Flora exclusively devoted to Scotland; it would be an invidious, 

 and it would also be a needless, task, to provoke a discussion of 

 the merits or demerits of those among my cotemporaries whose 

 publications embrace the plants contained in the whole extent of 

 the British Isles. With these I enter into no competition; nor 

 have I a single observation to offer that may deteriorate from 

 the merits of Lightfoot. His work contains a great mass of 

 curious and valuable matter, selected with judgement when it is 

 a compilation, and admirable where it is original. But it has long 

 been out of print; and it maybe added, without any diminution 

 of his fame, that during the last fifty years Botanical science has 

 made such advances that a new and a different work is now re- 

 quired. To supply, therefore, this desideratum is the object of 

 the present publication. The want of a similar work was felt by 



