BOTANICAL WORKS AND PUBLICATIONS 119 
preparation and manufacture of their products, market prices, and 
allied matters. This, perhaps, is its chief function, but it also pub- 
lishes descriptions of new plants and discusses diseases of plants. It 
records passing events at Kew and changes in personnel, describes 
new works and buildings, and gives notes on rare plants in the 
collections, etc. The volumes so far published contain a detailed 
history of Kew since the inception of the “ Bulletin.” Various 
appendices to the annual volumes are published, notably a list of 
all the new garden plants of the year. Separate volumes are also 
occasionally issued dealing with subjects of special importance, 
such as fibre-yielding plants, rubber plants, etc. 
The first list of plants cultivated at Kew was published by Sir John 
Hill in 1768. A more important work, however, was the Hortus 
Kewensis of the elder Aiton, published in 1789. A second 
^ StS edition of this work was issued (1810-13) by the younger 
Aiton, who also, in 1814, published it in epitomised 
or catalogue form. After that no complete list of plants cultivated 
at Kew was published until 1894, when the issue of the “ Kew Hand 
Lists ” began. Each list deals with a distinct group of plants, such as 
ferns, orchids, herbaceous plants, hardy trees and shrubs, etc. The 
idea has been not only to show what plants may actually be seen 
at Kew, but, what is perhaps a more important consideration, to 
provide also a standard of nomenclature for cultivated plants. The 
extraordinary tangle in which the botanical naming of plants is in- 
volved has long been the despair of the ordinary cultivator who has 
not the technical knowledge to understand the reasons for it. The 
fact that some plants have been given half-a-dozen or more names, 
and that for each one of them an authority is to be found who will 
give it preference, inclines him to ignore them all. Yet it is most 
important, for ordinary purposes of trade and correspondence, that 
a plant should have a generally recognised name. It is not so im- 
portant what name is used as that it shall be generally used. What 
Kew has done — and it is the only establishment in England with 
the requisite authority to do it — is to publish lists containing the 
proper name of every plant it cultivates ; the name, that is, which 
it considers should be generally adopted. To this name synonyms 
are referred. The native country of each plant is recorded and, to 
fix its identity, a published figure is quoted when such exists. It 
is gratifying to be able to record that the influence of these Lists in 
