ILLUSTRATIONS (13). PHANEROGAMIC PLANTS. 239 



care, according to a complete, severe, and methodical separa- 

 tion of the different varieties; while, moreover, we often find 

 no inconsiderable number of plants wanting in the large so- 

 called general herbariums, which are contained in some of the 

 smaller ones. Dr. Klotzsch estimates the whole number of 

 Phanerogamic plants in the Great Royal Herbarium at 

 Schoneberg, near Berlin, of which he is curator, at 74,000 

 species. 



London's useful work (Hortus britannicus) gives a general 

 view of the species which now are or recently have been, cul- 

 tivated in English gardens. The edition of 1832 enume- 

 rates, including indigenous plants, exactly 26,660 Phane- 

 rogamia. We must not confound with this large number 

 of plants that either have been, or still are, cultivated in 

 Great Britain, "all the living plants which may simultaneously 

 be found in an individual botanic garden." In this last 

 respect the Botanic Garden of Berlin has long been regarded 

 as one of the richest in Europe. The fame of its extraordi- 

 nary riches rested formerly on a mere approximative estimate 

 of its contents, and, as my old friend and fellow-labourer Pro- 

 fessor Kunth, has very correctly remarked,* "it was only by 

 the completion of a systematic catalogue, based on the most 

 careful examination of the species, that an actual enumeration 

 could be undertaken. This enumeration gave somewhat more 

 than 14,060 species; and when we deduct from these 375 

 cultivated ferns, there remain 13,685 Phanerogamia, among 

 which there are 1600 Composite, 1150 Leguminosa3, 428 

 Labiatae, 370 Umbellifene, 460 Orchideae, 60 Palms, and 600 

 Grasses and Cyperaceae. If we compare with these numbers 

 the number of species given in recent works, as, for instance, 

 Composite (according to Decandolle and Walpers), at about 

 10,000, LeguminosaB 8070, Labiatae (Bentham) 2190, Umbel- 

 liferse 1620, Grasses 3544, and Cyperaceae 2000,f we shall 

 perceive that the Botanic Garden at Berlin cultivates only 

 J-, \, and ^ of the very large families (Compositae, LeguminosaB, 

 and Grasses), and as many as \ and \ of the already described 

 species belonging to the small families (Labiatse and Umbel- 

 liferse). If we estimate the number of all the different species 



* Manuscript notice communicated to the " Gartenbau-Verein " iu 

 Dec. 1846. 



f Kunth, Enumeratio Plantarum. 



U 



