PREFACE. 



A NEW LONDON FLORA is much required. The author of the 

 present publication has undertaken the task in the hope that it 

 may be of use to students of practical botany, and has based it, as 

 it should be, not only upon material supplied by libraries, but also 

 upon actual collections in the field. The only handbook of the 

 kind still extant, he believes, is Mr. Daniel Cooper's ' Flora Metro- 

 politana ; ' but this is now out of date, and with its numerous 

 references to the 'Botanist's Guide' of 1805, and other ancient 

 authority, is unadapted to the requirements of the day. Moreover 

 the arrangement of the work is confused, the nomenclature often 

 obsolete, arid there is no index to the species. It is a well-known 

 fact that vegetation everywhere alters to a certain extent with the 

 lapse of time ; it does so to a marked degree in the neighbourhood 

 of London, where the disturbing elements of clearing, draining, 

 building, enclosing, are perpetually at work. Consequently, very 

 many of the suburban localities indicated by Mr. Cooper have long 

 disappeared, together with the plants which grew there ; and what 

 were once rural solitudes are now " portions and parcels " of this 

 vast metropolis. The neighbourhood of Putney is still tolerably 

 productive, so also is Hampstead Heath ; but there is little out of 

 the common to be obtained in Epping Forest nearer than Lough ton. 

 Blackheath is a bare common; Greenwich marshes have been 

 drained and converted into market gardens ; those below Woolwich, 

 into pasturage ; a small portion of Harrow Weald is still unenclosed; 

 likewise, Stanmore Heath ; otherwise, most of the heaths and 

 commons round about exist only in name. On the other hand, the 

 facilities of locomotion afforded by railway communication are now 



