INTRODUCTION. XXXIX 



Doubtless local botanists will readily detect errors and over- 

 sights, if they will take those counties with the botany of which 

 they are most familiar, and regularly note whether such counties 

 are named or omitted under each plant known to themselves as 

 being found there. They will thus not only detect what may 

 be wrong, but will also see what is still wanting formal record 

 towards completing the county list. It is utterly impossible for 

 one single botanist to keep up to all that becomes known about 

 the plants and places of each and every county. No Flora of 

 a single county has ever been printed, to which a list of 

 "Additions and Corrections'' could not have been made out; 

 and that perhaps even before the Flora was fairly through the 

 printing office. A compiler who takes cognizance of 112 

 counties and vice-counties should be allowed the same chances 

 for errors and oversights multiplied a hundred-fold,— nay, much 

 more, since one botanist may know some one county very well, 

 while it is impossible that one single botanist can know a 

 hundred counties equally well. 



Notwithstanding this obvious truth, however, the writer's 

 intercourse with other botanists has taught him, that there 

 are those among them who conceive it a great feat achieved, 

 when they have drawn up an approximately complete list of the 

 plants to be found in some single county or even in an area much 

 less than that of an average county. Yet these same botanists 

 are surprised, or affect to be surprised, on finding that another 

 compilation, which includes a hundred such spaces or upwards, 

 should appear to be less approximately complete than their 

 own small achievements. They would fail to understand, for 

 instance, that in such a compilatioil as this present one, con- 

 cerning itself with all the counties, a hundred oversights or 

 omissions would be only the equivalent to a single such defect 

 in one of their own county lists ; the difference between the 

 respective areas being duly allowed for. It may be found an 

 easy task to bring up the Flora of a single small county to the 

 actual date of printing the book ; especially so, if two or three 



