320 VII. AREAS OF SPECIES. 



drawn to its apparent absence from any considerable portion of the sur- 

 face by the substitution of dots in place of figures. If that seeming 

 absence should arise only from incompleteness of knowledge, the blank 

 is suggestive of a desideratum in topographical botany ; namely, a record 

 of some locality, suflBcient to supply the want, and fill in the racuity. 



Botanists are fond of recording localities which they find in their 

 tours ; but too usually they do so without any knowledge whether they 

 are recording over again facts already well known, and thus making only 

 worthless records, — or, whether they are recording facts which were truly 

 worthy of record, because new and desiderated towards the progress of 

 science. Unreasoning egotism prompts a shallow man to record in print 

 things which are new^ and interesting to himself; and so, sillily, pre- 

 sumed to be new and interesting to others. Yet the very same man 

 might often do veal service to the progress of science, by first ascertaining 

 which of his facts are novel, and are needed to supply some blanker 

 vacancy in its printed records. There is siill ample room and opportu- 

 nity for the services of every botanist ; without their energies being 

 ■wasted in making egotistic repetitions, subserving no beneficial object in 

 science. Eapid, indeed, might have been the progress of British botany 

 during the last quarter-century of cheap and rapid locomotion, if there 

 had been a journal devoted to such an object, and placed under the 

 editorship of a botanist competent to explain to its contributors, from 

 year to year, what sort of facts were wanting towards the advancement 

 of science, and which of their facts would constitute only worthless 

 records. And valuable, indeed, would have been a journal so con- 

 ducted, not only by its enhanced present interest, but also as a work of 

 historical reference on the book-shelf. But this paragraph is somesvhat 

 digressive, though not unusefully suggestive. 



To ret\irn to the lists. As they now stand, they include the following 

 numbers of species : — 



Austral 755. General 420. Boreal, &c., 250. 

 But if we deduct from the first, and add to the general list, all those 

 included in the groups numbered H, 9, 10, 11, which extend southward 

 of 51 and northward of 57, that is, all except one dozen, we shall then 

 make out the numbers thus : — 



Truly austral 569. Sub-general 606. 

 From the general plants we might in turn deduct the 18 species enume- 

 rated on page 305, and add them to the boreal group, when the latter 

 is set against the austral group, as augmented to 755. Looking at them 



