404 X. GENERAL REMARKS. 



of the flora distributed among them. This striking ine- 

 quality seems to be a general fact. In Scandinavia, with 

 a flora of 1700 species, nine orders make up together the 

 number of 874, or rather more than half of the flora. — In 

 Middle Europe, with a flora of 4636 species, nine orders 

 count up to 2445 of them, being still rather more than 

 the half. — In total Europe, it takes only eight orders to 

 make up considerably more than half of the flora. — In 

 the vegetable kingdom in general, according to the esti- 

 mates in Dr. Lindley's erudite compilation so named, 

 fifteen orders make up 42,304 species ; a number which 

 exceeds one -half of the total estimate. 



It is thus evident that there is nothing peculiar or 

 characteristic of the Biitish flora, in the single fact of 

 very few orders constituting half the numerical amount 

 of that flora. The same fact is found elsewhere ; the 

 great bulk of the floras of most countries being assignable 

 to a few leading orders, twenty or thirty, the smaller 

 remnant being divided and subdivided among numerous 

 other groups ; which are often less conspicuously charac- 

 terized, and slide more readily into each other. But it is 

 to be noted, that the groups which predominate in the 

 flora of Britain, are not precisely the same with those 

 which predominate elsewhere ; nor do they keep the 

 same relative position in series arranged for different 

 countries. The differences in this respect are usuallj'^ or 

 always found to increase as we descend in the scale of 

 numbers ; the larger orders usually keeping more similar 

 proportions than are kept by the smaller orders in dif- 

 ferent countries. Indeed, as the floral differences be- 

 tween countries are more in species than in genera, more 

 in genera than in orders, more in orders than in the gi-eat 

 primary classes, — it seems to be quite in course that the 

 larger (super - ordinal) orders should present a closer 



