ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 305 



standing, Professor Kunth, has justly remarked (in manuscript 

 notices communicated to the Gartenbau-Verein, in December, 1846), 

 " no real enumeration or compuation could be made until a sys- 

 tematic catalogue, based on a rigorous examination of species, had 

 been prepared. Such an enumeration has given rather above 14,060 

 species : if we deduct from this number 375 cultivated Ferns, we 

 have remaining 13,685 phaenogamous species; among which, we 

 find 1600 Composite, 1150 Leguminosae, 428 Labiatae, 370 Um- 

 belliferae, 460 Orchideae, 60 Palms, and 600 Grasses and Cyperaceae. 

 If we compare with these numbers those of the species already de- 

 scribed in recent works Composites (Decandolle and Walpers) 

 about 10,000; Leguminosse, 8070; Labiatse (Bentham), 2190; 

 Umbelliferse, 1620 ; Grasses, 3544 ; and Cyperacese (Kunth, Enu- 

 meratio Plantarum), 2000 > we shall perceive that the Berlin 

 Botanic Garden cultivates, of the very large families (Compositae, 

 Leguminosae, and Grasses), only 1-7 th, 1-8 th, and l-9th$ and of 

 the small families (Labiatae and Umbelliferae), about l-5th, or l-4th, 

 of described species. If, then, we estimate the number of all the 

 different phaenogamous plants cultivated at one time in all the 

 botanic gardens of Europe at 20,000, we find that the cultivated 

 species appear to be about the eighth part of those which are already 

 either described or preserved in herbariums, and that these must 

 nearly amount to 160,000. This estimate need not be thought ex- 

 cessive, since of many of the larger families (for example, Gutti- 

 ferae, Malpighiaceae, Melastomeae, Myrtaceae, and Rubiaceae) hardly 

 a hundredth part are found in our garden." If we take the number 

 given by London in his Hortus Britannicus (26,660 species) as a 

 basis, we shall find (according to the justly drawn succession of in- 

 ferences of Professor Kunth, in the manuscript notices from which 

 I have borrowed the above) the estimate of 160,000 species rise to 

 213,000 ; and even this is still very moderate, for Heynhold's No- 

 menclator botanicus hortensis (1846) even rates the phaenogamous 

 species then cultivated at 35,600 ; whereas, I have employed Lou- 

 don's number for 1832, viz. 26,660. On the whole, it would 

 appear from what has been said and the conclusion is, at first 

 sight, a sufficiently striking one that at present there are almost 

 more known species of phaenogamous (plants with which we are ac- 



26* 



