♦ 



Xll 



INTRODUCTION. 



Mr. J. E. Bowman, with his accustomed good judgment 

 suggested on a former occasion the propriety of erasing 

 from the British Flora such plants as Buffonia annua 

 Swertia perennis, Gentiana acaulis, Stipa pennata, with 

 some others universally acknowledged to be, at the present 

 day, neither indigenous to the British Isles, nor naturalized 



and our first impression was to follow his 

 advice. But they were retained out of respect to the 

 memory of Sir J. E. Smith, who saw reason to consider 

 them British, and who introduced them as such not only 

 into his Flora Britannica, but into English Botany and 

 the English Flora. In the present edition the 



among us 



same 



motives have induced the Authors to permit them to re- 



except in one or two instances, where there are 



mam, 



grounds to believe that the original specimen was obtained 

 from a garden, or that one plant had been mistaken for 

 another. Those, however, which no longer exist in the 

 given localities, as well as the many that have been or 

 are daily becoming naturalized among us, whether by the 

 agency of man or of birds, are branded with an asterisk 

 (*) ; but there are also numerous ones, as the Martagon 

 Lily and American Touch-me-not, which can have no 

 claim whatever to a place in our Flora : in many cases 

 however, they have been briefly noticed at the close of an 

 allied species or genus ; and when the genus itself is not 

 British, an abridged character of it has been sometimes 

 introduced into the conspectus at the head of its proper 

 order, especially where the plant is now so widely diffused 



Monkey-fl 



student. With 



abridged than in former editions ; but the reader will 



English Botany (E. B.) and its 

 Foreign references are almost 



(EB. 



Flora 



plants of Great Britain and Ireland, with the adjacent 

 islands. Those who desire a further knowled^^e of the 



fl 



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