NUMERICAL ESTIMATE. 39 



Such are no more entitled to be called Britons, than are 

 the Frenchmen or Germans who occasionally make their 

 homes in England. In addition to these, our descriptive 

 Floras include a considerable number now extinct, or never 

 actually found wild in Britain. The numerical estimate, 

 and in some measure also the botanical character of our 

 flora, will vary accordingly as these classes of plants are 

 included or excluded. Other circumstances, indeed, pre- 

 vent the exact number of species* being determined, for 

 scarcely two writers on the flora of the same country will 

 be found to agree in their divisions into species and varie- 

 ties, so that the supposed number of species is continually 

 fluctuating; but the general tendency of the present day 

 is to increase them, independently of new discoveries. 



According to Mr. Arnott's calculations f, the flowering 

 plants of the British isles amount to 1503 species, by 

 Smith's English Flora; and by Gray's Natural Arrange- 

 ment of British Plants, to 1636. Hooker's British Flora, 

 different editions, contains between 1500 and 1520 

 species. J But these works include Ireland and the 

 Channel isles along with Britain itself. Deducting about 

 twenty species peculiar to one or other of the former 

 islands, and at least as many extinct or mistaken species, 

 we may estimate the British flora at about 1470 species, 

 of which a considerable number have only doubtful, and 

 several only extremely doubtful, claim to be admitted into 

 it. Expunging a number of vague or nominal species 

 (Salix Stewartiana, Epipactis purpurata, Carex angusti- 

 folia, &c), and others scarcely established except where 



* The word species is here used in its common acceptation ; though 

 the writer of this does not consider that any permanent distinction 

 into species exists at all. 



+• Published in Murray's Encyclopaedia of Geography. 



| This is the best authority. A full catalogue of the species con- 

 tained in the 3d edition is published by Mr. G. Francis, 55. Great 

 Prescot Street, London, on a single sheet of paper, printed on one 

 side only, " to facilitate botanical correspondence and reference, as an 

 index to Herbariums," &c. 



