50 ON THE HIERACIA OF NORTH YORKSHIRE. 
British botanists were content to believe that our native forms 
might be grouped under about a dozen species, without violence 
to nature. But more recently, the labours of Babington, and 
especially of Fries, have dissipated this opmion, and there is now 
a pretty general impression, that the number of distinct species 
which we really possess is considerably larger than was supposed 
during the Smithian era. And just in proportion as they are 
carefully watched and compared together in their natural places 
of growth amongst the rocks and woods, and under cultivation, 
shall we be enabled to grasp what is constant and permanent in 
the midst of embarrassing instability, and evolve orderly and ac- 
curate arrangement out of chaotic uncertainty. 
It is not as though we possessed the complete chain of spe-- 
cies— 
“‘Continuous as the stars that shine 
And twinkle in the milky way ;”’* 
for, according to the most liberal computation, we have only 
about a fifth of the total number. Even compared with many 
other countries our proportion is small, for the Continent is the 
head-quarters of the genus, and we cannot doubt that the num- 
ber of species which Britain produces is considerably smaller 
than is afforded by France, or Germany, or Italy, or Russia, or 
Scandinavia. Such being the case, the less difficulty will there 
be, we may well suppose, in arriving at a correct understanding 
respecting them. So that it must be our opprobrium if this 
chaotic “state of uncertainty be allowed to continue.” 
As a motto to explain the spirit of the present paper, I might 
suitably have quoted the remarks of the late lamented Professor 
Edward Forbes. He says, in one of his earlier writings, the real 
progress of natural history must ever depend on the detailed ex- 
amination of the beings gathered around us by the laws of geo- 
of this dictum, for he remarks (with reference to the discrepancies between the 
views of different authors) : ‘ Nor indeed can it be wondered, for we see little use in 
giving characters at all,if Fries himself is to be credited ; since he observes, ‘ Cha- 
racteres nullo modo sunt specierum criteria, tantum ad species discernendas ad- 
minicula.’’’ I cannot see how the sentence will bear an interpretation that would 
involve such an inference. 
* “Quemadmodum stelle in via lactea ita stipantur, ut singulas egre distin- 
guere liceat, sic quoque Synantherez, centrum totius orbis vegetabilis sistentes, ob 
formarum copiam et varietatem ita confluere apparent, ut tam generum quam spe- 
cierum limites egre ponantur.”— Fries, Symb. pref. p. 3. 
