XXU PREFACE., 



botany of my native country perpetually under con- 

 sideration in the progress of the English Botany and 

 Floi-a Britannica; and this same subject having en- 

 gaged the attention of numerous coadjutors, espe- 

 cially among those members of the Linneean Society 

 who have contributed to enrich its Transactions ; I 

 am avi^are of so great a progress in our general stock 

 of knovrledge, that a Flora of Britain, far from being 

 necessarily a compilation, or a translation, must now 

 be a new and original work. The books just men- 

 tioned may, indeed, form the basis of such an un- 

 dertaking ; but the science of Botany, through their 

 means, has been progressive in an eminent degree, for 

 twenty years past, and the accession of new-disco- 

 vered species will be found no less considerable in 

 that space of time, than the elucidation of those pre- 

 viously known. Two natural orders of plants in parti- 

 cular occur, in the present volumes, under entirely 

 new points of view ; the Linnsean CalamaricE, chiefly 

 comprehended in the Trlandr'ia Monogynia, and the 

 Unibellat(£ in Pentandria Digyjiia. The genera of 

 the former had never been well defined, till Mr. 

 Brown, in his Prodromus of the Flora of New Hol- 

 land, undertook this difficult task. His labours have 

 generally been my guide, and I have ventured to dif- 

 fer from this great botanist chiefly in one particular. 

 He admits, as an essential generic distinction, the 

 absence or presence of certain bristles under the 

 seed in the CalamaricE. The observation of nature, 

 in several instances, but especially in Scirpus cari- 

 cinus and rufus, pp. 58, 59, has taught me, beyond 

 a doubt, that such bristles ought to have no place 

 in the generic characters, though they here distin- 



