PREFACE. Vv 
descriptions have been drawn up in the first instance from 
British specimens (except in the few cases of doubtful natives). 
They have been then compared with the characters given in 
Hooker and Arnott’s ‘ British Flora,’ and Babington’s ‘ Manual,’ 
or with detailed descriptions in some of our best local Floras. 
They have, in almost all cases, been verified upon continental 
specimens from various parts of the geographical range of each 
species; and a considerable number have been checked by the 
examination of living specimens. The works of the best 
French, German, Swedish, Italian, or other botanists have also 
been consulted wherever the occasion required it. ‘The dried 
specimens made use of have been chiefly those of the rich 
collections at Kew, including the unrivalled herbarium of Sir 
William Hooker; but the Author has also availed himself of 
numerous and repeated observations made during forty years’ 
herborisations in various parts of Europe. 
‘Taking into account the omission of all plants erroneously 
indicated as British, it will still, no doubt, be a matter of 
astonishment that, whilst the last edition of Hooker and 
Arnott’s ‘Flora’ contains 1571 species, and that of Babington’s 
‘Manual’ as many as 1708 (exclusive of Chara), that number 
is reduced in the present work to 1285.1 This is not owing to 
1 The number of species (exclusive of Chara) described in the last 
(eighth, 1881) edition of Babington’s “Manual” is 1758, that in this 
edition of Bentham’s “ Handbook” is 1296; that in the third edition 
(1884) of my ‘‘ Student’s Flora” (which replaces Hooker and Arnott) is 
1413. The difference between the Manual and Handbook is not (as it 
is here stated by Bentham to be) “ wholly owing to a different apprecia- 
tion of the value of the species,” but in a great measure to there being 
included in the “Manual” many avowedly introduced and naturalised 
plants. Nearly 150 such are enumerated ,in the Appendix to the 
“‘Student’s Flora,” nearly all of which appear in the ‘“ Manual,” but 
not in the ‘‘ Handbook.” Of the 462 more species in Babington’s than 
there are in Bentham’s work, 162 are comprised in the nine genera 
Ranunculus, Rubus, Rosa, Hieracium, Rumex, Salix, Juncus, Potamogeton, 
Carex, genera the limits of whose species are notorious subjects of con- 
