602 BOOK EEOOKDS. 



wise to disseminate and perpetuate errors, through the facilities 

 they offer to youthful inexperience and adult incompetence. 



Although much offence has been given to some of my own 

 friendly and well-meaning correspondents, by refusals to accept 

 several, of their reported localities, it may stiU be feared that this 

 present and other connected works will be found in turn to have 

 added to the stock of errors on record. If all that has conie to 

 my hands in form of manuscript lists and notes, including labels 

 with specimens, had been accepted on trust as sent, the erroneous 

 records so introduced into my books would have counted up to 

 hundreds, perhaps even to thousands. Truly, many errors have 

 been intercepted and sifted out ; but in turn I may also have 

 erred in instances, and without any one to intercept or correct 

 my own errors. 



Amid all the Local Floras enumerated in the preceding list, 

 it may be doubted whether there is any one of them which 

 has failed to add something fresh to the accumulated mass 

 of error, over and above the repetition of errors copied from - 

 their predecessors. And yet, if any book should be expected 

 to come out free from errors of plant and place, surely a Local 

 Flora is exactly the one which ought to do so ! Treating of a 

 reduced number of plants only, and treating of their localities in 

 a very restricted area, which ought to have been carefuUy and 

 thoroughly examined before a botanist presumed to publish its 

 Flora, — where is the cause, where is the excuse, for new errors 

 to be found ? 



The cause may be more easy to find than the excuse. In 

 several of them, the primary cause of error (with prevailing 

 badness of plan) is found in the youthful inexperience or in the 

 very superficial botanical knowledge of their Authors. In other 

 instances, where the Author was himself competent to the duty, 

 he may have really delegated part of it to others who were much 

 less so ; that is, he may have accepted reports of localities from 

 -contributors unprepared to name the plants seen in a correct 

 manner, or (too frequent fault 1) unfaithful in their statements as 



