PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 345 



The total number of plants comprised in Josua Gosselin's 

 list, some of them being repeated under different names, 

 amounts to 528 species, distributed as follows : — 



Flowering plants 458 



Ferns and fern allies 15 



Mosses 31 



Hepaticfc 6 



Lichens 18 



I pass over the cryptogams, merely remarking that the 

 disproportion between them and the flowering plants is not 

 really as great as it appears to us now. The number of mosses 

 described by Hudson is only about one-sixth as many as are 

 at present recognised as British, and of lichens hardly one- 

 tenth. Taking the flowering plants as the most important 

 section of the list, I find that out of the 458 species recorded 

 by Gosselin, no less than 415 are known to occur here at the 

 present time, or, to put it in another way, out of the total 

 nirmber of indigenous flowering plants collected by members 

 of this Society during the last five years, and recorded in our 

 Transactions, 415 species were known to Josua Gosselin more 

 than a century ago as natives of Guernsey. 



Of the remaining 43 species which have not been found 

 in recent times, 8 were recorded by Babington as existing in 

 this island some fifty years ago, 13 have not been confirmed 

 by any subsequent botanist, but they are plants which could 

 not well have been mistaken by so acute an observer as the 

 author of the list ; in all probability they are now extinct. 

 Eleven species may be regarded as casuals and aliens, and 

 consequently may turn up again at any time ; 9 plants may 

 possibly have been confounded with allied species already 

 recorded, but in any case an element of doubt attaches to 

 them ; and lastly, two species are certainly erroneous, which 

 may possibly be due to clerical errors in transcribing the list 

 for the press. 



It would be easy for me to pursue this analysis much 

 further, and bring to light additional evidence of the accurate 

 observation and painstaking work of this old botanist ; but that 

 could be done more conveniently in a strictly scientific paper. 

 All I have desired to do is to call your attention to the fact 

 that more than a hundred years ago there lived in this island 

 an accomplished worker in the field of botany, whose labour 

 has until now remained wholly ignored. In the preface to the 

 Flora Sarnica, published in 1839, Professor C. C. Babington 

 dismisses it in this cavalier fashion : " A catalogue of Guern- 

 sey plants drawn up in 1788 by Mr. Gosselin has been recently 



