September 30, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



419 



regarded as among those for the considera- 

 tion of which the British Association was 

 formed, and that a favorable view will be 

 taken of the conclusions which I take this 

 opportunity to lay before you. What, 

 then, is the present provision for the study 

 of our plants ? Since the days of Morrison 

 and Eay there have been many workers, 

 especially during the past century ; and an 

 extensive literature has grown up, in the 

 form both of book and of papers, the latter 

 more or less comprehensive, in the scientific 

 journals and in the transactions of socie- 

 ties. These papers contain much that is of 

 great value; but, owing to the absence of 

 any classified index, most of the informa- 

 tion in it is beyond the reach of any one, 

 except at the expenditure of much time 

 and labor. The constantly increasing ac- 

 cumulation of new publications makes the 

 need for a classified index always more 

 urgent; for the mass of literature is at 

 present one of the greatest obstacles to the 

 undertaking of new investigations because 

 of the uncertainty whether they may not 

 have been already undertaken and over- 

 looked through want of time or oppor- 

 tunity to search the mass exhaustively. 



While the early writers of descriptive 

 floras sought to include every species of 

 plant known to occur in Britain, this has 

 not been attempted during the past seventy 

 or eighty years, and instead of one great 

 work we know have monographs of the 

 greater groups, such as Babington's "Man- 

 ual" and Hooker's "Student's Flora" of 

 the vascular plants, Braithwaite's "Moss- 

 flora," etc. Local floras still, in a good 

 many cases, aim at including all plants 

 known to grow apparently wild in the dis- 

 tricts to which they refer; but they are 

 often little more than lists of species and 

 varieties and of localities in which these 

 have been found. In some, however, there 

 are descriptions of new forms and notes of 



general value, which are apt to be over- 

 looked because of the place in which they 

 appear. 



The early works were necessarily not 

 critical in their treatment of closely allied 

 species and varieties, but they are valuable 

 as giving evidence of what plants were sup- 

 posed to be native in England when they 

 were published. Even the works that were 

 issued after Linnteus had established the 

 binominal nomenclature for a time related 

 almost wholly to England. Sibbald in 

 "Scotia Illustrata" (1684) enumerated the 

 plants believed by him to be native in Scot- 

 land, and of those then cultivated. Be- 

 tween his book and Lightfoot's "Flora 

 Scotia," published in 1777, very little re- 

 lating to the flora of Scotland appeared. 

 Irish plants were still later in being care- 

 fully studied. 



The floras of Hudson, Withering, Light- 

 foot and Smith, all of which include all 

 species of known British plants, follow the 

 Linnaean classification and nomenclature in 

 so far as the authors were able to identify 

 the Linnaean species in the British flora. 

 "English Botany," begun in 1795, with 

 plates by Sowerby and text by Smith, was 

 a work of the first rank in its aim of figur- 

 ing all British plants and in the excellence 

 of the plates ; but it shared the defect of 

 certain other great floras in the plates be- 

 ing prepared and issued as the plants could 

 be procured, and thus being without order. 

 Its cost also necessarily put it beyond the 

 reach of most botanists, except those that 

 had the advantage of access to it in some 

 large library. A second edition, issued at 

 a lower price, and with the plants arranged 

 on the Linnaean system, was inferior to the 

 first, in the plates being only partially col- 

 ored and in having the text much curtailed. 

 The so-called third edition of the "English 

 Botany," issued 1868-86, is a new work as 

 far as the text is concerned, that being the 



