328 Dr George Johnston on. the 
This volume is restricted to the botany of the district ; it: 
contains a lecture on ‘“ Our Wild Flowers in their relations: 
to our Pastoral Life,’ replete with much that relates to the 
amusements of childhood, the popular beliefs, the gentler, and 
the darker love passages of the district, the trysting-trees, 
and the reputed haunts of the fairies and witches of the 
olden times. All the gentler feelings and associations with 
flowers are linked together in the story of the chequered for- 
tunes of a peasant family ; sentiments which will find an 
echo in every thinking bosom are wedded to some extracts 
from the best poetry of England and Scotland. There exists 
a pretty general prejudice against the very name of a local 
flora ; for in too many instances the descriptions of species,’ 
references tofigures, and lists of synonymes, have merely been 
copied from other works. About twenty years ago, the author. 
published a “ Flora of Berwick-upon-Tweed,” with original. 
descriptions of all the species, and, independent of its other 
merits, it occupies a position in the list of our local floras, 
which perhaps has only been approached by Greville’s Flora 
of Edinburgh. Now that we are provided with the critical. 
and standard British Floras of Babbington, and Messrs 
Hooker and Arnott, our author has done well to adopt the 
nomenclature of the two last-mentioned authors, and to dis- 
card all descriptions, except a few original ones on the genus 
Rubus, and a few others. We believe that botanists in gene- 
ral will not only ratify this wise decision, but approve of the. 
general plan of the work:—First, a defined area; second, 
a full list of species; third, the relative scarcity or abun- 
dance of each species; fourth, the time of flowering, and 
station; fifth, the general distribution of each species, and 
the localities of the rarer ones; sixth, the order in arrange- 
ment and precision in nomenclature approved of, or at all 
events known to botanists in every quarter of the world. 
Upon this solid foundation the author has built a short, 
natural history of all the more interesting species, the popu- 
lar names, and the uses, customs, and beliefs which have 
been associated with them. This will form the chief attrac- 
tion for the general reader, as well as for the more philoso-. 
phically-minded student. 
