NOTICE. 
Impeded by graver avocations, and in prospect of being 
obliged shortly to suspend altogether further progress by the 
necessity of leaving England for the benefit of health, I have 
decided on publishing at once the following portion of the 
Flora of Madeira ; -which I offer rather for the local use of in- 
valids, or other persons resorting to the island for a temporary 
residence, and who may find in these pursuits interest and re- 
creation for themselves or kindly employment in behalf of 
friends at home, than with the hope of imparting to European 
botanists much new or valuable matter. Still the following 
pages will supply, it may be hoped, one desideratum : namely, 
a more complete and correct catalogue of the living plants, 
actually or heretofore existing in Madeira and the adjacent 
islands, than has yet been provided. For, although several 
more or less accurate or full lists have appeared in print, whilst 
lately one in manuscript, formed by my regretted friend, Dr. 
Charles Lemann, partly indeed from his own researches, but 
completed with reference to a great part of the Madeiran and 
the whole of the Porto-Santan and Dezertan species from my 
own catalogue lent him for his private use, has been commu- 
nicated since his death to several botanists, still there is want- 
ing, in a form accessible to every one, any such authentic and 
exact register of the plants really growing in Madeira as I may 
not unreasonably hope to furnish : my present list being the 
careful fruit of a twenty-six years’ constant residence in the 
island, and of a subsequent six months’ visit in 1855, improved 
by diligent attention to the previous or contemporary labours 
of others in the same field, and above all by the free use of the 
important authentic materials deposited in the Banksian and 
Ilookerian Herbaria, accorded by the liberality and friendship 
of their respective guardians or owner. To Sir W. J. Hooker, 
a 
