71. AMENTIFERZ. 563 
constantly visited; the same bushes seen there doubtless month 
after month and year after year. He was not too modest to 
explain his own better opportunities in Crowe's garden, or to 
contrast them against the inferior opportunities of Sir William 
Hooker, as these extracts will make apparent :—‘ Full 30 years 
have I laboured at this task, 10 of them under the instructive 
auspices of my late friend Mr. Crowe, in whose garden every 
Willow that could be got was cultivated; more especially all that 
could be obtained from any part of Britain, by that unrivalled 
collector Mr. Dickson. The plants were almost daily visited and 
watched by their possessor, whom no character or variation 
escaped; seedlings innumerable, springing up all over the ground, 
were never destroyed till their species were determined, and the 
immutability of each verified by our joint inspection.”.... “No 
botanist can be competent to form an opinion about them, unless 
he resides among the wild ones, for several seasons, or continually 
observes them in a garden. No hasty traveller over a country, no 
collector of dried specimens, or compiler of descriptions, can judge 
of their characters, or essential differences.” ... . ‘I should have 
hoped that my excellent friend Dr. Hooker would have given 
Mr. Crowe and myself credit for some accuracy of observation, and 
not have set almost all our labours at nought, without some 
i knowledge, at least, of his own.” (Eng. Flo. iv. 164, 
165. 
Since the decease of Smith and Crowe, probably no English 
botanist has acquired a technical familiarity with the Willows of 
this country at all equal to that of Mr. Borrer, himself one of the 
Smithian-Linnean school. Following Borrer, although in a much 
more local and limited range of exploration and observation, come 
the Rev. J. E. Leefe and Mr. James Ward, as Salicetists with 
“some practical knowledge” of their own. But none of these 
three botanists, Borrer included, has given us a general revision or 
re-arrangement of the genus Salix, at once descriptive and topo- 
graphical, which can be placed on a par with those of the genus 
Rubus, Rosa, or Hieracium, by three other ‘“Industrious Bees” 
among our botanists still in living usefulness. 
For the purpose here immediately in view, my own notes on the 
localities of the Willows are sadly deficient. They were made 
mostly in years long past, and in relation to the aggregate species 
before treated on pages 3183—318; sparingly extended to any 
reliable acquaintance with the special segregates now to come 
under notice. Nor will the specimens and labels placed in my 
own herbarium sufficiently supply what is wanting. On turning 
to the Local Floras and other records of localities, in the endeavour 
to trace out the areas or other topographical details of the segre- 
gates, I am still much at fault: quite convinced that many false 
localities are on record, through misapplied names or aggregate. 
