Bibliographical Notice. 61 
some of his topics are treated in detail, may often greatly assist an 
author who desires to abbreviate or curtail; but such assistance 
would here be vainly sought, no works available in this way being in 
existence. The ‘Cybele’ must thus cite and arrange its own details, 
regarded from the geographic points of view. And, indeed, only 
details can have permanent value at present. Attempts at generali- 
zation, so usually made in conformity with the groups of systematic 
botany, can have extremely little value until those groups are made 
more settled and uniform.”’ [But will this Utopian uniformity ever 
come?} “It is to the distribution of species, not of groups, that 
attention should be given at present, especially in a local treatise. 
Hence the resort to lists of species in this volume, as condensed 
summaries of details adapted for comparison and reference.” (Intro- 
duction, p. 4.) 
To extend our survey with equal exactness to the general range 
of British plants would indeed be a Herculean task, and one from 
which our author has wisely recoiled. It would require mauy years 
and many Watsons to obtain any results that could be fairly com- 
pared with those in the volume before us. But, as was said, the 
work is accomplished in England : let us see the foreign botanists do 
as much for themselves. Hence we are warned (p. 10) that the 
scope of the ‘Cybele’ “must needs be confined to a view of the pre- 
sent vegetation of Britain, and of the manner in which the compo- 
nent species of that vegetation are now distributed within the area of 
Britain itself, together with such inferences as may be drawn from 
existing circumstances in regard to the probable origin of those spe- 
cies here: that is, whether placed in Britain by natural causes, or 
whether introduced by human agency.” 
The details collected and examined in the three previous volumes 
are so re-arranged and corrected in the fourth “as to convert the 
individual and separated facts into collective and comparative expo- 
sitions.” Though dry reading, the arrangement of the species into 
tabular lists has heen chosen as best adapted for reference, and be- 
cause “thus the greatest amount of special and general facts can be 
recorded in a condensed form, under different points of view, and can 
thus be made ready for the use of Phyto-geographers whenever the 
botany of other countries shall become portrayed in like manner.” 
Mr. Watson is suspicious of general remarks : he tells us (p. 13) 
that, unfortunately, the so-called “general remarks” “are in truth” 
too often “only remarks of the most vague and inexact kind. True 
generalizations usually require much time and thought, combined 
with a scrupulous regard to accuracy: true generalizations are in 
consequence extremely rare.” 
In Chapter II. are discussed the terms Orders, Genera, and 
Species, with the inevitable conclusion that the two former have 
no abstract existence in nature (p. 27), but are conventional ideas 
pat b though of course ‘bearing more or less accordance with the 
ities of nature, in so far as they are intended to express and clas- 
sify the facts of nature, if this is done only by dissevering a series or 
chain at those points where the links are widest or least coherent ”’ 
(p. 17). 
