NOTICES OF BOOKS. 311 
and cannot fail to be of great service both are and in the colony 
leads one to think of other colonial Floras, and especially of the 
i of whi 
ork have done their part towards making up a fourth volume, and 
this, with the help, both scientific and monetary, which the colony has 
shown itself able and willing to afford, ought to be brought out without 
further delay. bs ey 
A New London Flora; or, Handbook to the Botanical Localities 
the aes a nics Districts. Compiled from the latest sathitiites 
and from per onal ob 0. Eyre Cu. pre Crespieny, 
ms 2 fe ondon: Hardwicke and Bogue. 1877. 
(12mo, pp. 180.) 
Ir may be doubted with some show of reason whether the time for 
publications of this nature has not almost pas y: 
meration of the vegetable productions of a district, the boundaries of 
which are determined solely with reference to their distance from 
some arbitrary centre, however convenient to a resident collector, can 
have in itself but little scientific value, and is on a par rather mae 
some particular pais tie a whether in the herbarium or the 
geniens ged be supplied; but with this the matter ends. There is 
0 room any attempt at the correlation of the rae with the 
olay sad physical history of the country, or for the investigation of 
e origin and limits of the constituent elements of the flora ; especially 
the valuable lessons to be deduced from the absence even more than 
from the presence of certain ioe in the district, and the 
species, will be wanting. e mag 
urtis * owes its value rather to the soups vei original asia 
tinuator. Passing by 
and Gordon, and the ‘‘ Botanist’s Guide,’’ of Cockfield, 
** Flora Metropolitana” of Cooper, a work ere topographical in its 
scope, and which seems to have furnish e first suggestion of the 
publication now under consideration. This was immediately followed 
by the ‘London Flora” of Irvine, a conspicuous instance of mis- 
** Botanicu ndinense, or the London Herbal,” of Petiver, com- 
he earliest account 
of the at : 2 
+ Curtis had previously, i in 1774, published a ‘‘ Catalogue of Plants growing 
Wild in the Environs of London” (ib., p. 394). 
