BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 
13 
ciples, would be one of the most complete Botanical works 
ever published in this, or in any other country ; and would 
obviate the objection sometimes made, that such Floras as 
districts can supply, necessarily separate groups of plants 
which ought to be connected, and consequently mar the fair 
proportion and beauty of their systematic arrangement. Se- 
veral plants, properly exotics, have escaped from gardens and 
other places, and having found a soil and locality congenial 
to them, have become naturalized. These very properly are 
rejected in w orks intended to embrace British species only, 
and in consequence occasion much trouble to the student. 
Among these may be reckoned, Cannabis sativa, Solanum 
Lycopersicum, Geranium striatum, Malva Crispa, and per- 
haps many others, whose claims to a place in the British 
Flora are equal to those of iEnothera biennis. Datura 
Stramonium, and Echium Italicum. Such acclimatized 
plants, though unfitted by their foreign origin, from ranking 
with British species, might have a space allotted them in a 
work illustrative of British productions. 
By such an arrangement the advantage of easy reference 
would be secured, together with other signal improvements 
of great importance, to those students w ho wish to extend 
their researches beyond the narrow limits of their own na- 
tional Flora. • 
I hope it will not be deemed intrusive to propose another 
matter to this Society, as a very desirable object, though 
more connected with the general subject than with any indi- 
vidual branch, as Local Botany. It appears that while phy- 
siological, systematic, and descriptive Botany, have been stu- 
died and illustrated with a zeal and success unexampled in 
former times, chemical Botany has not been so successfully 
prosecuted. 
Perhaps in the present state of chemical knowledge, it 
would be impossible to investigate the component parts of 
vegetable bodies, with the same successful and brilliant re- 
sults, as were obtained by submitting the alkalies and alka- 
line, and other earths, to the test of experiment. However 
it might be worth the operator’s while to make an attempt. 
It is certain that the chemical properties of vegetable sub- 
stances are not so well understood as the same properties of 
inanimate bodies. 
It is a common doctrine of Botany that individual species 
of the same natural order, contain nearly the same simple 
