PREFACE. ¥ 
from. The course has been always onward, indeed, but 
at the deliberate pace of the tortoise. Successors may 
march forward all the faster and surer for this slowness 
hitherto. 
A work like the Cybele Britannica or its Com- 
pendium, the first of its kind, unavoidably assumes a 
good deal the character of being critical and polemical. 
Distribution is primarily based on localities observed 
and recorded; and records of localities give frequent 
occasion to weigh critically the personal testimony, in 
reliance upon which the records are to be accepted 
and made use of as scientific truths or facts. Dis- 
tribution, again, deals with plants as so many species; 
and under existing conditions of technical botany, 
that term itself immediately suggests controversial dis- 
crepancies of opinion about the validity of those entities 
intended by the specific names used. 
It is not the Author’s disposition to accept opinions 
on faith or facts non-inquiringly. His creed is, that 
intellectual truth should be held paramount over all 
other considerations. Such a creed is certain to give 
offence to individuals when practically carried out. The 
official and, the influential are prone to think it quite 
proper that they should receive the largest amount of 
personal laudation, and yet they will inconsistently 
object against the smallest degree of personal censure, 
in reference to their published opinions or public 
practices in science. While the Author has refused to 
be restrained by rules so inconsistent, he has never 
wittingly either misrepresented or misquoted the writers 
whom he has had occasion to criticize. Not seldom 
he has himself been subjected to garbled quotation 
and intentional misrepresentation, usually anonymous or 
