592 PERSONAL AUTHORITIES. 



will certainly not lessen the usefulness of Topographical Botany, 

 to find the abbreviated quotation " Eng. Bot. 3 " or " E.B. ed. 3 ' 

 coming in rather frequently, although space allowed not the 

 addition of volume and page to the title of the work. Such 

 occasional exceptions, indeed, well serve to illustrate what was 

 said on this subject in the introduction. 



8. Under the rule mentioned very many names of counties 

 stand in blank, that is, uncertified by any cited authority ; 

 although the writer's private notes do refer to an authority in 

 all those instances. With few exceptions there are already 

 recorded in print elsewhere sufficient personal authorities for 

 the counties named in blank, and not questioned by the sign of 

 distrust or uncertainty " ? " In some very few instances a 

 manuscript authority only has come under cognizance, although 

 under such form or condition as not to admit of personal 

 quotation. 



At one time there was a project for starting altogether de novo, 

 limiting the counties for nominal enumeration strictly to those 

 for which a present or recent personal authority could be 

 adduced, and without adding thereto the name of a single 

 county on faith of the records in books alone. Completeness 

 would thus have been sacrificed for the sake of increased accu- 

 racy. But the plan of affixing the query " ? " to the less certain 

 counties, and weeding out those least to be trusted, by enclosing 

 their nos. [ ] and omitting their names from the enumerating 

 lists, will really go far towards making the unvouched equally 

 reliable as those vouched by a personal authority. Doubtless 

 there will still be a per centage of errors in either case, although 

 it be only a fraction per centum ; for it is not anticipated that 

 the errors left in will amount to so much as an entire unit per 

 cent. On the contrary, too, a small per centage of the rejected 

 counties may turn out to have been correct, although recorded 

 an authorities which at present are held to require confirmation 

 before final acceptance. 



It is to be kept in recollection that there are too widely 



