LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 



Ixxv 



Monocotyledons and Apetalae. The south-eastern peninsula of 

 Europe, comprising Greece and Turkey, has still less means of 

 publishing indigenous Floras. The Austrian portion alone has 

 been well investigated and illustrated by Yisiani's excellent Flora 

 Dalmatica; what we know of the remainder has been due to the 

 works of British, German, or French botanists, none of which are 

 sufficiently recent or comprehensive to be here mentioned. The 

 flora of the Levant, which, although technically a part of Asia, is in 

 its natural productions so closely connected with southern Europe, 

 and so particularly interesting as the country from which or through 

 which so many early cultivated plants had proceeded, had, since the 

 days of Tournefort, been little investigated until taken in hand 

 by Boissier, who is preparing a general Flora Orientalis, in 

 which it is hoped he will condense, and in some instances re- 

 form, the very numerous species described by himself and others. 

 In the meantime, M. de TchihatchefF has published a very useful 

 general summary under the title of Elemens d'une Flore de l'Asie 

 Mineure. 



Beyond the limits of Europe, I may first refer to our own Colonies. 

 A general summary of the steps taken to procure a uniform set of 

 these floras was inserted, by Dr. Hooker, in the Natural History 

 Review for July last, and I have only now to report progress. 

 The fifth part, recently issued, of Grisebach's Flora of the British 

 West India Islands has brought it down to the commencement of 

 Monocotyledons ; the fourth part of Thwaites's Enumeration of 

 Ceylon Plants goes far into Monocotyledons ; and each of these com- 

 pact but comprehensive works will, it is hoped, be very shortly 

 completed by the issue of one more part. The printing of the second 

 volume of Harvey and Sonder's Flora Capensis, comprising Legu- 

 minosae and Calyciflorae, is nearly finished. Our Indian botanists 

 have been active, as' evidenced by the Praecursores Florae Indicae 

 of Drs. Hooker and Thomson, the Flora Adenensis of Dr. T. Ander- 

 son, Mr. Edge worth's Account of Punjab Plants, and other papers 

 communicated to our Society ; and although, some years since, an 

 excellent opportunity for giving to the world a really good Flora of 

 that rich and varied territory — more wanted, for a variety of pur- 

 poses, than any other botanical work — was lost by an ill-advised 

 want of liberality on the part of the then East India Company, I 

 have now strong hopes that the present Indian Government will at 

 length make such arrangement as will enable Dr. Hooker to lay be- 

 fore the scientific and industrial public, in the shape of a compen- 

 dious Flora Indica, the results of his own important labours and 



