PREFACE. 



THE object of this work is to supply students and field-botanists with a 

 fuller account of the Flowering Plants and Vascular Cryptogams of the 

 British Islands than the manuals hitherto in use aim at giving. 



For the plants regarded as composing the British Flora proper, I have 

 mainly followed the London Catalogue of British Plants, 7th ed., 1874 ; 

 being fully satisfied that I should thus best serve the interests of British 

 Botany. The difficult task of determining which of the many doubtfully 

 indigenous or naturalized plants should be regarded as British by adoption 

 or otherwise has in the successive editions of this Catalogue been settled 

 by the two botanists most competent to form an opinion by many years 

 of research and by matured judgment Messrs. H. C. Watson and J. 

 Boswell. It is true, I may think that some of the Species they have 

 introduced have less claims than some they have rejected, but this 

 applies to very few cases indeed. 



The Ordinal, Generic, and Specific characters are to a great extent 

 original, and drawn from living or dried specimens or both. After work- 

 ing them out, I have consulted the usual British and Continental Floras, 

 and collated the descriptions throughout with Mr. Boswell's (an author 

 usually quoted by his earlier name of Syme) edition of English Botany, 

 of the descriptions in which work I cannot speak in terms of too high 

 praise. By this method of re-description, whilst I believe I have avoided 

 some errors of my predecessors, I have no doubt made others of my own ; 

 such creep into all endeavours to describe most or all of the organs of 



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