PEEFACE. XVll 



the surface of this island is yearly, monthly and daily under- 

 going, from the progress of building and its invariable attend- 

 ant, increased cultivation ; — low lands, but lately waste, now 

 inclosed, and spots not long since free, and accessible to every 

 wanderer in search of health or recreation, at this time dot- 

 ted with tenements, their sites fenced from the intrusion of 

 stranger footsteps with the jealous exclusiveness of individual 

 appropriation ; — it will be evident that the first recorded station 

 for some rare or local plant may often be the last on record : 

 the onward course of improvement may have swept such species 

 from our soU, when it becomes a matter of interest, not merely 

 to learn the fact of its having once existed, but, by dates, to 

 ascertain the time up to which at least it was known to have 

 occurred amongst us. By the remoteness of these dates we 

 can in some measure calculate the probability of rediscovering 

 plants that have thus apparently become extinct ; since, by how 

 much longer is the interval during which the. search for such 

 lost species has been unsuccessfully renewed, by so much are 

 the chances diminished of again meeting with them in their 

 original places of growth. The botanist is thus spared a waste 

 of time and trouble, and his attention diverted from destroyed 

 or exhausted localities to others likely to reward him with the 

 same or even more valuable acquisitions. 



The flowering time of each species in the climate of the Isle 

 of Wight has been carefully noted from personal observations 

 through a series of years, and will be found often to differ ma- 

 terially from that indicated for the same species in books, where 

 the season of blossoming is commonly made to appear much 

 shorter than it really is, to the manifest detriment of the inex- 

 perienced botanist, who, trusting to the correctness of such 

 indications, is led to look for a species in its perfection in June 

 or July which he might have gathered as fully in blossom in 

 May, or continued to find flowering on in August or Sep- 

 tember. 



Our times and seasons cannot of course furnish a correct 

 Floral calendar for the more northern parts of the kingdom, 

 though practically applicable to all the southern, and perhaps 

 with tolerable exactness to many of the midland, counties of 

 England. My indications were, however, intended for the Isle 



