36 



"Partly owing to more exact cliscriniination, but it may be 

 feared chiefly uiuler a weak-miuded craving- for name — notoriet}^ 

 the modern system is to subdivide species on differences so slight 

 and uncertain that descriptive language now almost fails to make 

 them intelligible to other botanists without the aid of portrait 

 figures or selected specimens. To such an excess has this practice 

 been carried of late that we now find in print long and worth- 

 less descriptions miscalled specific, made only from a single indi- 

 Tidual plant — say from a single fern frond, or from the dried 

 twig of a rose, briar, or bramble bush. It would be almost as 

 wnse to describe an individual Hottentot or Eskimo, a Tom 

 Thumb or a Daniel Lambert — a one legged Donato, or a three- 

 legged baby, as a species distinct from the fair-skinned and two- 

 legged Homo Sapiens f Linn. J of medium size." (p.p. 35-6). 



" The tendency of this practice (segregation) must be to make 

 book botany attractive only to the lowest class of minds which 

 can engage in science at all — the minds which devote themselves 

 exclusively to minute details, and which find their right vocation 

 there, simply because incapable of anything higher" (p. 428). 



But whatever objections there may be to the latest form of the 

 London Catalogue from a scientific point of view, it still has its 

 use. It is easily procurable ; it is in the hands of nearly every 

 possessor of an Herbarium ; it is constantly quoted in natui-al 

 history periodicals, and, therefore, it is a convenient book to use 

 for purposes of Botanical comparisons between counties or 

 districts. Testing the Dorset Flora by it, we see at once what 

 reason we have to be proud of this portion of oxu- natural history. 

 When the admirable work by oiu- President was in preparation 

 an earlier edition of the Catalogu.e was all that was available, 

 and the remark then made about our Flora was this : — " The 

 preceding pages show that of the 1,428 British plants comprised 

 in the London Catalogue, 989 have been found within the limits 

 of our county, including 26 which are probably extinct and 68 

 aliens. There are also 36 sub-species and 44 varieties." But 

 the new edition of the Catalogue enables us to give still larger 

 numbers. After a careful compaiison of the two lists I have 



