PREFACE. 



It is reported that Lord Campbell prepared a Bill to limit the 

 privilege of copyright to such books only as contained a proper index ; 

 he would have secured the lasting gratitude of students if he had 

 completed his work and induced Parliament to make it law. Many 

 otherwise valuable books with imperfect indexes or none are actually 

 useless to the student, who rarely has sufficient leisure to turn over 

 all their pages to search for the information he requires ; these remarks 

 apply especially to books of the class of " Curtis's Botanical Magazine " 

 and " Sowerby's Botany," both of which are without general indexes : 

 the editors of the former have published an index to the first forty-two 

 volumes, then, passing over the next twenty-eight volumes, an index 

 to volumes 71 to 86, and finally, an index to volumes 71 to 96. 

 Mr. Quaritch, who has rendered so much service to lovers of books by 

 his valuable catalogues of books with their complete indexes, published 

 an index to volumes 54 to 70, so that on the completion of the 

 107th volume, to ascertain if a particular plant is illustrated, it may 

 be necessary to search through three indexes and twenty-two single 

 volumes, or without Mr. Quaritch's 4 index, which is not contained in 

 the publisher's issue, thirty-nine volumes. 



The irritating waste of time involved in such searches induced me 

 to suggest to the present publisher of " Curtis's Botanical Magazine " 

 that he would confer a great boon on his subscribers if he published 

 a general index to the entire work; however, much to my surprise, ' 



propositi 



when the MS. ready for 



the printer was offered to him by an enthusiastic naturalist, Mr. Henry 



