REGIUS PROFESSOR OF BOTANY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW. THE SECOND EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. "Call the vales, and bid them hither cast LONDON: LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, & GREEN. INTRODUCTION. THE object which the Author proposed to himself, in preparing a new Flora of the British Empire, was of a twofold nature: 1stly, to provide the young Student with a description of our native plants, arranged according to the simplest method; and 2dly, to afford to the more experienced Botanist, a manual, that should be useful in the field as well as in the closet. In regard to the first object, the experience of nearly an hundred years has proved to every unprejudiced mind, that no system has appeared, which can be compared to that of the immortal Swede, for the facility with which it enables any one, hitherto unpractised in Botany, to arrive at a knowledge of the Genus and Species of a plant.-The Linnæan Method is, therefore, here adopted. It has been the opinion of the author, and of many of his friends, that, in most of the Floras hitherto published, however excellent in other respects, either too much or too little space has been devoted to the generic and specific descriptions and synonyms; in the one case, swelling the book to a size, which entails both expense on the purchaser, and difficulty in consulting the several volumes; in the other, reducing the technical characters to the shortest possible compass, so that they can scarcely be made available, except to those who are already partially acquainted with the plant under examination, or with some of its near allies. Between these extremes, the author has attempted to steer a middle course, by giving diagnostic remarks where, and where only, they have appeared to him necessary; confining the synonyms, with few exceptions, to those of the writer who first described the plant, to a good figure, and a reference to a single Flora of Great Britain; and by adopting such an arrangement of the subject-matter as would best occupy every portion of the page, without rendering it |