Dr Lauder Lindsay on the Flora of Iceland. 69 
however, is quite at variance with that to which my own 
observations and inquiries have led me, as I will shortly 
show. Vahl’s list is most significantly headed, “ Liste des 
Plantes que l’on suppose exister en Islande, dressée par M. 
Vahl; toutes celles devant lesquelles il y a un astérisque s’y 
trouvent positivement,” a distinction being drawn between 
_plants believed or supposed to occur, and those which have 
been actually found in Iceland. I do not know on what 
grounds he introduces the names of plants simply supposed to 
occur, and which have not been actually found! But I fear 
that some other writers may have lost sight even of this dis- 
tinction, and may have mentioned as natives of Iceland, or 
really found therein, plants which are only by them supposed 
to occur! If this has really happened, the writers have pro- 
bably been seduced by their knowledge of the Floras of the 
nearest countries, viz., Greenland and Lapland. Further than 
this, however, Vahl’s list, as given in M. Robert’s volume, not 
only contains many mis-spellings, in most or all cases mere 
typographical mishaps, but it does not give the authorities 
for the names of the plants enumerated. This omission opens 
a door for endless difficulties in ascertaining what the plants 
found really were. The question of synonymy becomes most 
intricate and confusing, and in too many cases it is a sub- 
stantial barrier to all progress. I have pointed out some of 
the defects of two of the Floras of Iceland; but the same, or 
similar faults, are less or more chargeable against all. 
_ Admitting the impossibility of drawing up a complete and 
accurate ‘‘ Flora Islandica” from existing data, still it ap- 
pears to me that it would be an advantage to possess a list 
of the plants of Iceland, revised up to 1860. I refer to one 
based on a comparison of lists hitherto published—in the 
absence of a re-examination and re-naming of a complete 
collection of Icelandic plants, which no existing herbarium, 
so far as I am aware, possesses—the naming and arrange- 
ment of the plants in such revised list being in accordance 
with modern standard works on botany. Such a list might be 
accepted as a fair representation of the present state of our 
knowledge of the vegetation of Iceland, and it might therefore 
serve as a basis for the labours of future botanical travellers in 
