174 The Philippine Journal of Science 1915 
Blanco described most of his species from fresh material, and 
but few from dried specimens that were transmitted to him by 
various correspondents. His field was exceedingly limited, most 
of his material being from the provinces near Manila: Rizal, 
Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Bataan, Pampanga, and Bulacan. A 
few were from other provinces in Luzon, such as La Union, 
Uocos Sur, Ilocos Norte, Cagayan, and Camarines, and still fewer 
from other islands, including Mindoro, Cebu, and Marinduque. 
His personal knowledge of the vegetation of the Philippines was 
practically limited to that of the settled areas, at low altitudes, 
in and about the towns, and most of the species described by 
him are not from the forested areas. Most of the species con- 
sidered are of wide distribution in the Philippines, and a very 
high percentage equally common in the Indo-Malayan regions. 
While Blanco described some species from the primeval forest, 
such species are relatively not numerous, and with two or three 
exceptions are all from the lower altitudes. In no case did he 
describe species from the higher mountains. In several instances 
he described species without having seen specimens, basing his 
descriptions upon statements of individuals who claimed to have 
seen the plants in question. 
Undoubtedly most of the species described from the settled 
areas were collected by Blanco himself, but it is very evident 
that he had little personal knowledge of the forested regions, 
and that he personally collected but little material from such 
regions. A clear idea of his methods of securing material from 
the forests is given by the following quotation from the first 
edition of his work, under Quercus cerris (p. 728) : “Es cosa 
verdaderamente lamentable para los amantes del estudio de la 
naturaleza, el que ni ruegos, ni suplicas, ni el dinero sean sufi- 
cientes para tomar conocimiento de estas preciosidades de los 
bosques filipinos.” 
Blanco and his immediate successors had no conception of the 
question of geographic distribution of plants ; and without some 
knowledge of this phase of botany, with no herbarium (for there 
is no internal evidence in his work that Blanco preserved even 
temporarily any botanical specimens 3 of the plants that he de- 
scribed), with no extra-Philippine botanical material for com- 
8 Botanical material preserved in the herbarium of the Botanical Garden 
at Madrid, credited to Blanco by Colmeiro (Bosquejo Hist. Jard. Madrid 
88), and by A. DeCandolle [La Phytographie (1880) 395], has been shown 
by Vidal [Rev. PI. Vase. Filip. (1886) 14] not to have been collected or 
transmitted by Blanco. 
