352 PHILOSOPHICAL TEANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1753. 



preface, and 98 copper plates, very curiously engraved. It was printed at Peters- 

 burg in the year 1 749. 



An account of the first volume of this valuable work was communicated to the 

 Royal Society, by Dr. John Fothergill,* and has been published in their Trans- 

 actions. From its title, we were only promised an account of the plants of Si- 

 beria; but Dr. John George Gmelin, its author, at that time professor of che- 

 mistry and natural history at Petersburg, and now at Tubingen, has gone much 

 further, and has given us a great number of new and useful observations con- 

 cerning the natural history of that vast region. The abundance of matter, and 

 the limits of an extract, obliged Dr. Fothergill to confine himself, principally 

 to the geographical and meteorological part of the work ; but as the contents of 

 this 2d vol. are chiefly botanical, Mr. W. takes a review of the 1st vol. to intro- 

 duce with propriety an account of the contents of the 2d. 



The Flora Sibirica contains the plants, growing spontaneously in a region of 

 vast extent, bounded by the Uralensian mountains on the west, the ocean of 

 Kamtschatka on the east, the Mare Glaciale on the north, the countries of Kal- 

 mucks and Mongales, and the confines of China, on the south. Our author 

 has, among the productions of these countries, interspersed a few plants, col- 

 lected by the botanist G«rber, near the rivers Don and Wolga, and in the Uk- 

 raine; partly because many of the s^me kind grow in Siberia, and partly from a 

 desire that these curious plants should no longer be concealed from the public. 

 He has given no plant a place which he himself has not examined, at least in a 

 dried state, and of which he was not satisfied respecting its generical character. 



The plants of Kamtschatka were collected by two of their company, detached 

 for that purpose, who sent to our author from time to time large collections and 

 descriptions of such natural bodies as occurred to them. In digesting the plants 

 into classes, the author has followed the method of Van Royen of Leyden, who 

 considers, that all plants may be ranged into 20 classes; and in consequence of 

 this system, he has given 5 classes in his 1st vol. viz. those which Van Royen 

 intitles, palmae, lilia, gramina, amentaceae, and umbelliferae; and 3 classes in 

 the 2d vol. viz. compositae, aggregatae, and tricoccae; the remaining 12 classes 

 therefore are probably to be published hereafter. The author has generally 

 adopted the genera of Linnaeus ;. some indeed he has taken from Haller; but 

 wherever he thought it expedient to differ from these great men, he gives his 

 reason; and when he finds a plant, which cannot properl)' be ranged under any 

 genus already established, he forms a new one; in the explanation of which, 

 after the manner of Linnasus, he omits nothing essential to it. 



To the diffeient species, discovered in this expedition, P. Gmelin has affixed 

 names, after the manner of Linnaeus, Haller, Van Royen, and the more modern 



* See Phil. Trans, vol. xlv, p. 248; vol. ix, p. 491, of these Abridgments. 



