124 Requisites necessary for the advance of Botany. 
might advantageously engage the attention of those who wish to 
promote the progress of botany, beyond the stage at which it is now 
arrived, we are by no means inclined to undervalue the labours of 
those who content themselves with merely reviewing the steps 
through which it has already advanced, and may not be 'disposed to 
travel out of the beaten track. Even those who confine their atten- 
tion to the local botany of some well known district, have it in their 
power to improve our knowledge of individual species, and teach us 
something more than may be already known of their distribution 
and properties. Notwithstanding the perfection to which the 
knowledge of the native plants of England has arrived, there is un- 
questionably much that is yet to be done before we can expect to 
obtain a precise account of our indigenous Flora. Not to mention 
those parts of Ireland which hitherto have never, or scarcely ever, 
been trodden by the foot of a botanist, the mountains of Scotland 
are still producing fresh novelties to reward the ardour of those who 
accompany our Northern Professors in their annual excursions. Al- 
though we cannot expect very numerous additions to be hereafter 
made to our phanerogamic botany, there must still remain many 
species unnoticed among the lower tribes of Cryptogamia, especial- 
ly among the obscure families of Fungi. Now indeed that we pos- 
sess a complete Flora of Great Britain, since the recent publication 
of the second part of the rifth volume of the English Flora, from the 
accurate pen of Mr Berkeley, we may expect daily additions to be 
made to our knowledge of the Fungi, from various parts of the coun- 
try, so soon as they shall have been more carefully searched under 
the direction of this new guide. But it is not so much the disco- 
very of new species which is likely to make us more thoroughly ac- 
quainted with the real character of our Flora, as the determination 
of the precise circumstances under which the old ones occur. No 
one can deny that our strictly indigenous Flora has been greatly aug- 
mented by the importation of many exotic species, which have be- 
come more or less perfectly naturalized, and must now necessarily 
be considered as forming part of the wild and native vegetation of 
the country. It is, then, of first rate importance to the progress of 
Botanical Geography that we should determine, as nearly as possi- 
ble, which are the truly indigenous and which the naturalized spe- 
cies. Formerly, indeed, and perhaps the time is not quite gone by, 
British botanists were proud of swelling the local Floras of a given 
district by the addition of any chance specimen which they happen- 
ed to meet with, and thought very little of stating the circumstances 
under which a little reflection or inquiry might have satisfied them^ 
