LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. Hx 



great a number they may be strung together, without arrangement 

 or comparison. It has been very much the custom, for instance, 

 for foreign botanic gardens to append to their catalogues so-called 

 diagnoses of species of plants, which the director or curator had 

 received under false names, or had been unable to determine, or 

 which had become modified by cultivation, or which for any other 

 reason have been supposed to be new. The consequence is that, 

 from the times of Willdenow, Linlc, and Desfontaines to the latest 

 lists of seeds or catalogues of German, Russian, or Italian Botanic 

 Gardens, there has been no more fruitful source of the undeterminable 

 puzzles which encumber our systematic works than these diagnoses 

 which are not diagnostic. I shall not, therefore, detain you by any 

 detailed enumeration of such works, or of detached descriptions of 

 plants, insects, &c., brought from distant countries, and supposed to 

 be new, because the describer could not or would not take the 

 trouble of identifying them ; nor shall I specially mention accounts, 

 of botanical and entomological excursions, descriptions of, and dis- 

 sertations on, critical species and hybrids, records of reappearances 

 of rare animals and plants in particular districts, and similar notes ; 

 for although I fully admit the value of observations of detail, if 

 accurate, as the groundwork of all that is valuable in the science, 

 yet they require consolidation and comparison before they can con- 

 tribute essentially to its advancement. Still less shall I attempt to 

 dwell upon purely speculative works, such as proposals for new 

 classifications, according to some special theory of the author, or 

 perhaps founded upon some class of organs to which he has paid 

 exclusive attention. In plants alone three or four such have been 

 broached within the last two years, not one of them having the least 

 chance of being adopted. My present object is, indeed, merely to 

 give a general sketch, so far as my information extends, of the com- 

 parative activity of naturalists in the different countries where the 

 study of Biology is prosecuted, commencing with Northern Europe and 

 ending with our own country. For further details I have great satis- 

 faction in referring in Zoology to the comprehensive Record of Zoolo- 

 gical literature mentioned in my Address of 1866, and of which the 

 volumes for 1865 and 1866 have since appeared, affording a fair 

 promise that this most valuable repertory will be steadily continued. 

 Unfortunately we have as yet nothing of the kind in Botany, the 

 best Catalogue Raisonne of current botanical literature being per- 

 haps the Revue Bibliographique of the Bulletin de la Societe Bo- 

 tanique de France. That is, however, necessarily in a great measure 



