OF A LOCAL FLOEA. 
101 
greatly, inter alia, upon a point of the most vital moment to 
works like the one now treated of.- They have diverse methods 
of separating or grouping, of segregating or aggregating plants. 
' Now it is unnecessary for our author to enter upon the study of 
natural affinities, or to entangle himself in an attempt to define 
what is a species, and what something else. Luckily he is 
relieved from all speculation on this vexed question. He will 
probably have views of his own, but their expression would be 
out of place in the pages of his work His task is a purely 
practical one : in the first place, that of discovering the plants 
which grow in a particular tract of country ; and, secondly, of 
recording their names and habitats, in . language perfectly 
intelligible to other botanists. 
To do this latter, he must follow one of the systems of 
nomenclature given ,to us by leading botanical writers. Some 
of these have chosen to keep alive the old aggregate species 
named by Linnaeus, Hudson, and Smith ; whilst others, less 
conservative, and more discriminating, have recognized and 
described the large number of subordinate segregates, which 
those aggregates include, and which, as time moves on, become 
more and more clearly understood by, and familiar to, students 
of field botany. Perhaps the book most representative of the 
views of the older botanists, is Bentham’s Handbook of the 
British Flora.” It has met with much commendation, and is 
doubtless an almost perfect guide to beginners in the science. 
In it the aggregation or ' ‘‘ lumping ” of species is carried to 
an extreme, which, however convenient it may be in relieving 
a learner from perplexity at the beginning of his study, detracts 
largely from the usefulness of the book, in making records of 
localities and other like purposes. As a matter of fact, in my 
own experience, I find that six out of every seven amateur 
botanists, put their trust in the “ Handbook,” and from their 
point of view' very properly so indeed. But when these 
