166 
KEW GARDENS. 
produce nearly one-half of the whole total number of the plants 
that are known. For Europe, in an area of under 4,000,000 
square miles, there are about 10,000 species of plants known ; 
take 1,500 species as an estimate for the British Isles, and 
add as many more for Gibraltar, Malta, and Cyprus, and this 
gives us 8,000 species. For India, where we have every range 
of climate from equatorial heat to perpetual snow, an estimate 
of 15,000 species is not excessive. For Cape Colony, and our 
tropical possessions in Africa, including Mauritius, and the 
Seychelles, say 2,000 species. For Australia, New Zealand, 
and Fiji, another 10,000 may safely be added. For the British 
possessions in North America we may safely say 8.000 species, 
nearly all of which are amongst the 10,000 which make up 
the flora of the United States. For the British West Indies 
and Guiana, 5,000 will not be over the mark, or, to take the 
British possessions by continents 
Europe ... 
3,000 species. 
Asia ... ... ... 
... 15,000 
Africa 
... 10,000 
Australia and Polynesia 
... 10,000 
America ... 
... 8,000 
These numbers add up to 46,000, and in this estimate there 
will not be a large number of plants counted twice over. 
Amongst the many excellent things planned by Sir William 
Hooker was a series of floras, classifying and defining the 
plants of all the British possessions upon one uniform system. 
Of these the volumes for Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, 
the West Indies, and Mauritius, are finished ; that for India, 
the most extensive of all, for which Sir J. D. Hooker himself 
undertook the onerous task of editorship, is far advanced ; 
those for the Cape and tropical Africa are about half finished, 
whilst the plants of Fiji and the British possessions are fully 
dealt with in another form, and those of Guiana have been to 
a considerable extent included in the great flora of Brazil, 
which has been brought out at the expense of the Brazilian 
Government. 
The objects, as I have already indicated them, of a 
national botanic garden are at Kew, as at all other fully- 
equipped establishments of the same kind, carried out by three 
different departments, as follows : 1st. The Garden, in which 
a selection of the most interesting plants are cultivated ; 
2nd. The Herbarium and Library, in which dried specimens of 
as many different kinds of plants as possible are gathered 
together, named, and arranged for ready reference, in company 
with a collection of botanical books and drawings ; 3rd. The 
