A2 REVIEWS. 
consulted by botanists, except where more comprehensive and 
trustworthy accounts are not in being. We hope Mr. Salmon 
will be encouraged to proceed with his ‘ Flora of Surrey,’ for - 
which large collections have been made. We will not throw cold 
water on his good intentions, even although he do not extend his 
researches into the adjoining counties of Sussex and Kent, and 
give us a Flora of the peninsula lying between the Thames and 
the Channel. We will be thankful for the ‘ Flora of Surrey’ as 
an instalment, and we are sure that the thanks of the fraternity 
will be his sole reward. We are stingy indeed if we refuse this. 
There are materials for a Flora of Middlesex, North Kent, and 
Essex, existing partly in MS., partly in the pages of the ‘ Phyto- 
logist,’ and partly in the ‘ Magazine of Natural History,’ and in 
other works devoted to the progress of botanical science. We 
would propose a Metropolitan Flora, not on the plan of the late 
D. Cooper’s ‘ Flora Metropolitana,’ nor of any existing work on 
local botany. Most of these works are too expensive for those 
botanists who have most need for them and who would make 
most use of them. Their price varies from four or five to twelve 
shillings. The latter sum ought to set up a local botanist with 
all appliances needful for the successful prosecution of the study. 
Another objection to most of our local floras is, that they are 
too bulky, and on this account the herborizer has to make out a 
list of localities in that part of the country he means to visit. 
Another objection is, that they are limited by artificial, not na- 
tural, boundaries. The political division into counties is requi- 
site for legal, but not for scientific purposes. The natural boun- 
daries do not always coincide with the civil; but even when they 
do,—for example, when a river is the boundary, as the Thames is 
between Surrey and Middlesex,—the same plants are found indif- 
ferently on either side of the river. For local floras we prefer 
blocks or tracts of country, say from twenty to thirty miles round 
a centre such as London, York, Nottingham, Salisbury, etc. ; or 
river-basins, as the valley of the Thames, bounded by the Surrey 
downs on the south and the Bucks and Berks downs on the north ; 
the Wealds of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, and the like. But for 
convenience we would adopt an area of from twenty to twenty-five 
or thirty miles round about a large central town or city. 
Plants which are universally distributed might be dismissed 
with a very brief notice, and these might perhaps be as profitably 
