472 IV. EXPLANATIONS OF THE 
allotted to them in the present Compendium, it seems desirable 
to substitute references to that more extended work. Occasionally 
it may be found desirable to add some few lines of comment or 
explanation; but any such addition will be the exception rather 
than the rule, or this Third Part would soon swell into a volume 
of itself. Looking forward to the many plants which may be held 
to claim some notice, however brief, eight or ten of them must be 
brought on a page; such closeness necessarily implying a very 
curt notice for each. 
Records sufficiently in detail to show at least the county 
distribution of each plant, whether native or introduced, are still 
much to be desired. This subject was alluded to on page 119 of 
the ‘Supplement to the Cybele Britannica.” The wish then 
expressed is still felt, although the prospect of its accomplishment 
becomes less with each year of delay; whilst the need of such a 
topographical summary is yearly becoming more apparent. In the 
absence of some such tabulated record, false statements are 
continually made by provincial collectors, to the effect that some 
given species had by them been discovered in some given county, 
and is there recorded for the first time; although the fact may be, 
that the same plant had been previously and even repeatedly 
found and recorded for the same county by other botanists. Of 
course, such false statements are simply exhibitions of halflearned 
self-sufficiency, not intentional deceptions; but equally their 
obvious tendency is to mislead other persons. Take an instance 
in point, printed so recently as this present year of 1869 :— 
In the Phytologist for 1844, page 650, a communication from 
Mr. Alfred Knight, then of Cirencester, points out the distinctions 
between Fragaria vesca and I’. elatior better perhaps than they 
had been explained by any preceding English botanist. His 
opportunity for comparing them together in the living state, was 
found in the county of Gloucester and is thus stated ;—“I found 
the two species growing together in Hail Bathurst's park in this 
neighbourhood.” The Phytologist is a well-known repertorium of 
facts in local botany; and the original series of that journal was 
contributed to by many among the best English botanists at its 
