SPECIMEN, Sec. 



Amongst other suggestions, which the Committee of the 

 British Association for the advancement of Science, at their 

 Meeting in York, in 1831, threw out to the consideration of 

 naturaUsts, is one to the following effect : — 



" That botanists in all parts of Great Britain and Ireland 

 be invited to compose, and communicate to the meetings of the 

 Association, catalogues of county or other local Floras, with 

 indications of those species which have been recently intro- 

 duced, of those which are rare or very local, and of those 

 which thrive, or which have become or are becoming extinct ; 

 with such remarks as may be useful towards determining the 

 connexion which there may be between the liahitats of parti- 

 cular plants and the nature of the soils or strata upon which 

 they grow, with statements of the mean winter and summer 

 temperature of the air and water at the highest as well as the 

 lowest elevation at which species occur, the hygrometrical 

 condition of the air, and any other information of an histori- 

 cal, economical, and philosophical nature." 



" If," it is observed, " a complete botanical survey of the 

 British Islands could be obtained, the results would be import- 

 ant, when the Flora in the aggregate came to be compared 

 with its relations to soil, climate, elevation, &c." 



It was with the view of accomplishing, with reference to the 

 neighbourhood of Oxford, a part of the objects contemplated 

 in the passage just quoted, that I was led to undertake a sort 

 of Index to the Flora of Oxfordshire, to which the botanical 

 station of each species, and the geological character of each of 

 its habitats^ were to be subjoined, in all those cases at least in 

 which the plant was sufficiently circumscribed in its distribu- 

 tion over the district under survey, to render such an attempt 

 either useful or practicable. 



An Index of this kind accurately drawn up, might, I con- 



