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The Naturalist. 



of all his labour. So long as the facts remain as mere isolated facts, they 

 can only interest and be remembered by a limited number of specialists ; 

 but when our facts can be made to illustrate general laws, their value 

 rises to a higher level, and in Natural History in general, and botanical 

 geography in particular, the value of our results will depend very 

 greatly upon our attempting to realise for ourselves beforehand, as 

 clearly and fully as we can, what it is we want to get to know, and 

 then setting to work systematically to collect and arrange the facts that 

 elucidate the subject we have selected. 



What I am going to say will all have exclusive reference to 

 our indigenous British plants of the more complicated types of 

 structure, flowering plants, and vascular Cryptogamia, of which the 

 number of specific types is estimated by different authorities at a 

 figure varying from 1,200 to 1,500. But I should like to pause for 

 just one moment to point out to those amongst you who are not 

 botanists, that our British flowering plants and ferns have been 

 studied so long and by so many different observers, and under such 

 favourable circumstances, that we probably know as much about them, 

 from different points of view, as about any set of organised beings 

 whatever ; and that for this reason they furnish a field of research 

 specially adapted to support general conclusions. 



There is a special fitness in taking stock of the position which we 

 occupy in our knowledge of British botanical geography j ust now, as 

 we are in the position of an army that has lost its leader. My late 

 friend, Hewett Cottrell Watson, who died eighteen months ago, made 

 the study of the distribution of British plants the labour of his life, 

 and worked at it through fifty years with unremitting patience and 

 diligence. When he first turned his attention to the matter— when he 

 was a student at the University of Edinburgh, attending the classes 

 of Professor Graham, about 1830 — botanical geography had no footing 

 as a separate field of study. The only idea which botanists had then 

 in registering plant-stations was to guide collectors to the places 

 where they could gather the rarities. His first work was an octavo 

 volume of 300 pages, entitled " Outlines of the Distribution of 

 British Plants belonging to the division Vasculares," printed in 

 Edinburgh in 1832, when he was 28 years old, for private distribution. 

 Under the title of " Remarks on the distribution of British plants, 

 chiefly in connection with latitude, elevation, and climate," he 

 published what is substantially a new edition of the same work in 

 London, through Longman's, in 1835. In the same year he published 

 the first volume of the " New Botanist's Guide," and the second 



