a few years more— on the contrary, if any fault can be 

 found it is that it has not been done long long ago. 

 Suggestions for republication have often been made — 

 by myself amongst others — both here and in U.S.A., 

 but hitherto they have all fallen through, chiefly on 

 account of the very large expenditure involved. No 

 scientific or even semi-scientific work of this kind can 

 ever be undertaken for the general good of the com- 

 munity without involving very great expense — accuracy, 

 exactness, and completeness being of the utmost essen- 

 tial importance. Some idea of the extent of the work 

 may be obtained from the fact that nearly, if not quite, 

 300,000 entries have to be made, and consequently some 

 300,000 plates have to be examined, tabulated, and 

 noted. The labour, in fact, is prodigious. 



The Royal Horticultural Society has now taken 

 in hand the work which the united botanists and 

 gardeners of previous years should by rights have 

 undertaken long since, and would have done so had 

 the work not been practically impossible for any single 

 individual to encompass. If it was to be done at all 

 it w T as work for a Society, and the Royal Horticultural 

 Society was, and is, the only Society in the world 

 which has had the courage to face it. 



Up to the present time the Society has collected 

 £1,300 for the purpose, all of which has already been 

 spent in preparing the manuscript, the rough draft of 

 which is almost completed, but has still to undergo 

 the laborious process of checking before it can be sent 

 to the press. Before the war, when the work was first 

 definitely set in hand by the Society, the total cost was 

 estimated at about £2,500, now it cannot be completed 

 and issued for less than £4,000 or £4,500. 



