l6 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



on the other hand, a considerable number have been enumerated 

 which to others, more particularly to thoroughly scientific botanists, 

 will appear superfluous. The various claims have been subjected 

 by me to careful examination, and I have endeavoured to be just 

 to each according to the measure of its apparent weight. I doubt 

 very much if anybody desires to become acquainted with the thou- 

 sands of little pictures of flowers in Deakin's ' Florigraphia, ' 

 Denisse's ' Flore d'Amerique,' Miss Jackson's ' Pictorial Flora/ 

 Morris's ' Flora conspicua,' or Loudon's ' Encyclopaedia ' [of 

 Plants], not to mention still more inferior productions. I cannot, 

 however, avoid looking on it as a defect in my work that single 

 good original drawings in works like Loudon's ' Arboretum,' Berg's 

 ' Charakteristik der Pflanzengenera,' Le Maout's ' Lecons elementaires/ 

 Franz Schmidt's ' Oestreichs Baumzucht,' Kerner's ' Oekono- 

 mischen Gewachsen,' and others, have been passed over without 

 mention. I can only defend this by the consistent carrying out of 

 the principle I had laid down for myself, viz., having once selected 

 a work for reference, to quote it throughout ; this did not seem to me 

 advisable to do in the case of the above-mentioned works on account 

 of their containing so many illustrations that could well be dispensed 

 with. When I come to publish a supplement which the appearance 

 of more recent publications will under any circumstances render 

 necessary, I will not fail to remedy this defect by mentioning the 

 representations most worthy of notice contained in the class of 

 works mentioned. On the same occasion also justice shall be done 

 to other plates that have been left unnoticed which are to be found 

 singly in particularly rare works, or in periodicals and in academical 

 treatises that I have not as yet been able to obtain. My numerous 

 friends and correspondents, to whom I am indebted for so much 

 valuable co-operation in my by no means easy task, will, I hope, 

 lay me under fresh obligations by their further assistance in supply- 

 ing the various omissions they may still discover. For this purpose 

 I will not fail to put before them in the ' Botanische Zeitung ' a list 

 of the rare books containing delineations of plants that I have not 

 been able to obtain access to. 



" The internal economy of the book was infinitely easier to 

 decide on than the choice of what was to be admitted and what 

 was to be rejected. An alphabetical arrangement, retaining the 

 names under which the drawings had been published, proved 

 itself on examination to be the most expedient method. A thorough 

 correction of the synonyms would have been a labour of many years, 

 and could only have been accomplished by some one of the few 

 thorough systematic botanists that we still possess. To make 

 these corrections in a few thousand instances, which I could have 

 very well done, and to have left the great bulk untouched, would 

 have been, as it seemed to me, a mistake that I congratulate myself 

 on not having committed. It was otherwise with the nomen- 

 clature of some authors of earlier date, such as Rheede, Rumpf, 



