PEEFACE. XIU 



viency to purposes of ornament or utility, has been carefully 

 excluded from these pages.* The custom of incorporating the 

 Cerealia, for instance, and the hardier, more common, but exo- 

 tic, fruit and forest trees with a work professing to treat of 



* Almost the only national Flora, ouv own and that of Denmark excepted, 

 that is not more or less burdened with these conventional objects of mere culti- 

 vation, is the admirable 'Flora Suecica' of Wahlenbevg, who judiciously 

 reserves for an appendix every species of disputable Scandinavian origin, and 

 so presents us with a faithful transcript of the vegetable geography of that vast 

 peninsula. The opposite practice is unfoitiinately sanctioned by the authority 

 of DeCandolle, which, it is to be feared, will long continue to uphold the abuse. 

 The otherwise excellent general and local Floras of Lejeune, Host, Keichen- 

 bach, &c., and all the older ones, with scarcely an exception, are encumbered 

 with extraneous genera and species. The truly valuable and original trans- 

 Atlantic ' Flora Cestrica' is disfigured by a number of economical garden plants. 

 Nor are our own local Floras free from this defect. The Edinburgh Catalogue 

 of British Plants, which, from being in general circulation as authority for 

 nomenclature, and professing to iuclude a Flora of the district round that city, 

 will afford a fair instance of what has just been advanced. This latter part 

 of its avowed scope and intention gives anything but a faithful register of 

 the indigenous vegetation of the neighbourhood, for, though many species are 

 therein noted as certainly introduced, we are left in doubt whether or not they 

 maintain their ground by spontaneous propagation, — a condition indispensable 

 to their retention on the list with any degree of propriety. So long, however, 

 as we perceive such southern and even continental genera and species as Bvxus, 

 Caslanea, Eranthis, Linaria purpurea, Slaphylta, Trifolium incarnatum, Mal- 

 comia maritima. Reseda fruticulosa, and the like, occupying a place in that Ca- 

 talogue, we must hesitate to regard it as a correct indicator of the genuine 

 aboriginal or even naturalized vegetation of that part of Scotland, in the sense 

 to which that term should be restricted. Judging from the total absence of the 

 above species in a truly wild state in this southerly part of England, in which 

 they might with most reason be expected to occur, but where, in fact, one or 

 two only amongst them are even naturalized, and that but partially and incom- 

 pletely, no trifling number of the 970 species composing the Flora Edinensis 

 must be the mere outcasts of gardens, or have been purposely planted or dis- 

 seminated, as I am certain is the case with the Spanish Chestnut wherever it 

 occurs in Britain. Specimens of such worse than dubious natives it may suit 

 the Societv to have at hand for distribution amongst its members ; but, small 

 as is the value to the herbarium of such semi-domesticated examples, for any 

 purpose of scientific truth their indication in a district Catalogue is utterly 

 worthless. If the same lax rule is to be followed out, why not include the 

 ornamental trees of our parks and pleasure-grounds, — the Horse Chestnut, the 

 Spruce Fir, the Lilac, Laurel, and hundreds more ? The transition would 

 thence be easy to the orchard and kitchen-garden, in adopting the productions 

 of which we should have the precedent of continental usage in our favour. 



