THE STUDY OF THE BRITISH FLORA 243 
need for a classified index always more urgent ; for the mass of 
literature is at present one of the greatest obstacles to the under- 
aking of new investigations because of the uncertainty whether 
they may not have sete bertaape undertaken oe overlooked through 
want of time or opportunity to search the mass exhaustively. 
While the early erie of descriptive re sought to include 
every species of plant known to occur in Britain, this has not been 
attem oe during the past seventy or eighty years, and instead of 
one great work we now have monographs of the greater Bi 
such as Babi ington’s Manual and Hooker’s Student's Flora of 
vascular plants, Braithwaite’s Moss-flora, &c. Local floras still, 
in a good many cases, aim at including ‘all plants known to grow 
apparently wild in the districts to which they refer; but they are 
often little more than lists of species and varieties and of localities 
in which these have been found. In some, however, there are 
descriptions of new forms and notes of general value, which are 
for related almost wholly to ae noe tei - pai 
Tasitate (1684) enumerated the plants believed by h 
native in Scotland, and of those then cultivated. sen n his 
book and Lightfoot’s Flora Scotia, published. in 1777, cory "little 
relating to the flora of Scotland appeared. Irish plants were still 
later in being carefully studied 
The floras of Hudson, Withering, Lightfoot, and Smith, all of 
which include all species of known British plants, follow the 
Lin so far as the authors 
, was a work of the first rank in its aim of figuring all 
sti the ieee arfatiged’ on the Linnean system, was inferior to 
dinh 
the text much curtailed. The so-called third —_— of the 
English vane Ae pore 1868-86, is a new work as far as the t 
is concerned, that being the work of Dr. Boswell Syme, waas 
it heen representative of its subject; but the a with few 
as 
This edition, eceminon included only the vase 
Characee. As this is the only large and folly ill 
