DESIGN OF THE FLOEA ANTAECTICA 85 
Prince Edward's, the Crozets, Eoyal Companies Islands, 
Emerald Island, and whether Webster's Deception Island 
or Cook's South Georgian plants are in the Museum. Tristan 
D'Acunha and St. Paul's and Amsterdam, though in such 
low latitudes, have an Antarctic Botany, but I have seen 
none of them. 
However, he set to work on his own plants and his books 
during the next six months with this end in view. One more 
botanical letter to his father may be quoted to illustrate his 
work on the Cryptogams, with its tendency to simplify classifica- 
tion and its relation to his Herbarium work. After the third 
visit to the ice he writes on the way from the Antarctic Circle 
to the Cape : 
March 7, 1843. 
During the past voyage I have re-examined all my An- 
tarctic Mosses. . . . The Andraeae puzzled me exceedingly 
and occupied me very many days, for I had to examine 
many hundred specimens. I do hope they are scrupulously 
accurate, for I always compared the present examination 
with what I made on the spot, and consider most of the 
mosses to have had three examinations ; where there is so 
much novelty I may have made varieties into species, but 
in a field so new some allowance must be made. . . . 
There are hardly any new genera, nor have I any wish 
to get a notoriety by having ' HooJc.'' tagged on to the end 
of a string of barbarous names. I should be far more proud 
of placing a well-known plant in its true position and relation 
to others than naming another and leaving others to squeeze 
it in between what he may think its congeners. 
All other mosses are divisible into Aero and Pleuro- 
car'pi ; there are five groups I consider quite natural, and 
the three first of them abnormal ; these are what McLeay's ^ 
quinary system acknowledges, but you must not think that 
I am led away by any system, for I formed this system 
before I saw McLeay's and before I understood his views. 
When we met we never broached the subject of his system, 
for I felt myself too ignorant of the subject ; I cannot, 
1 William Macleay, of Sydney, son of the Colonial Secretary, was a naturalist 
of some note, inventor of a now forgotten system of classification which posited 
the number 5 as the basis for thQ structure and grouping of all living things. 
