MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. Xlll 



Dr. Graham he devoted himself to the study of the geographical 

 distribution of the British Flora." 



As a writer on the geographical distribution of the British 

 plants his books extend over more than forty years, beginning 

 with 1832, when he was twenty-eight years old, and ending with 

 1874. From first to last, so far as Botany was concerned, he 

 concentrated his attention upon this special field, and worked at 

 it with unremitting diligence and patience. The paragraph 

 from Herschell which he chose as a motto for the ' Cybele ' 

 indicates with characteristic clearness the spirit in which he 

 worked : " There is scarcely any well-informed person who, if 

 he has but the will, has not also the power to add something 

 essential to the general stock of knowledge, if he will only 

 observe regularly and methodically some particular class of facts 

 which may most excite his attention or which his situation may 

 best enable him to study with effect." And, although as a 

 general proposition one may reasonably demur to it as an over- 

 statement, there can be no question that in his own particular 

 case it was carried into effect with signal completeness. When 

 he took up the subject in 1832, the principal notion in registering 

 plant-stations was to guide collectors to the places where they 

 could gather the species. When he published the last volume of 

 ' Topographical Botany ' in 1874, the distribution of all British 

 plants from all possible points of view was so thoroughly searched 

 out and placed on record that all that remains for his successors 

 is to fill in a few small points of detail. His first work, 'Out- 

 lines of the Distribution of British Plants belonging to the 

 division Vasculares,' is a small octavo of 334 pages, which was 

 printed in Edinburgh in 1832 for private distribution. Under 

 the title of ' Remarks on the Distribution of British Plants, 

 chiefly in connection with Latitude, Elevation, and Climate,' 

 what may be considered as another edition of the same work 

 was published in London by Longmans in 1835. It was trans- 

 lated into German by Beilschmidt in 1837, and acknowledged by 

 the German botanists by a diploma of membership from the 



