124 Requisites necessary for the advance of Botany. 



might advantageously engage the attention of those who wish to 

 promote the progress of botany, beyond the stage at which it is now 

 arrived, we are by no means inclined to undervalue the labours of 

 those who content themselves with merely reviewing the steps 

 through which it has already advanced, and may not be disposed to 

 travel out of the beaten track. Even those who confine their atten- 

 tion to the local botany of some well known district, have it in their 

 power to improve our knowledge of individual species, and teach us 

 something more than may be already known of their distribution 

 and properties. Notwithstanding the perfection to which the 

 knowledge of the native plants of England has arrived, there is un- 

 questionably much that is yet to be done before we can expect to 

 obtain a precise account of our indigenous Flora. Not to mention 

 those parts of Ireland which hitherto have never, or scarcely ever, 

 been trodden by the foot of a botanist, the mountains of Scotland 

 are still producing fresh novelties to reward the ardour of those who 

 accompany our Northern Professors in their annual excursions. Al- 

 though we cannot expect very numerous additions to be hereafter 

 made to our phanerogamic botany, there must still remain many 

 species unnoticed among the lower tribes of Cryptogamia, especial- 

 ly among the obscure families of Fungi. Now indeed that we pos- 

 sess a complete Flora of Great Britain, since the recent publication 

 of the second part of the fifth volume of the English Flora, from the 

 accurate pen of Mr Berkeley, we may expect daily additions to be 

 made to our knowledge of the Fungi, from various parts of the coun- 

 try, so soon as they shall have been more carefully searched under 

 the direction of this new guide. But it is not so much the disco- 

 very of new species which is likely to make us more thoroughly ac- 

 quainted with the real character of our Flora, as the determination 

 of the precise circumstances under which the old ones occur. No 

 one can deny that our strictly indigenous Flora has been greatly aug- 

 mented by the importation of many exotic species, which have be- 

 come more or less perfectly naturalized, and must now necessarily 

 be considered as forming part of the wild and native vegetation of 

 the country. It is, then, of first rate importance to the progress of 

 Botanical Geography that we should determine, as nearly as possi- 

 ble, which are the truly, indigenous and which the naturalized spe- 

 cies. — Formerly, indeed, and perhaps the time is not quite gone by, 

 British botanists were proud of swelling the local Floras of a given 

 district by the addition of any chance specimen which they happen- 

 ed to meet with, and thought very little of stating the circumstances 

 under which a little reflection or inquiry might have satisfied them, 



