The Student's Flora of the British Islands

Abstract

NOTWITHSTANDING the number of British Floras already in existence, field-botanists have long lamented the want of a text-book combining all the requisites for out-of-door work, unquestionable accuracy, clearly-expressed definitions, a good arrangement, and a portable form. Although the hand-books we have hitherto used have possessed one or other of these features in an eminent degree, no one has yet succeeded in uniting them. For accomplishing this difficult task the best thanks of every British botanist are due to Dr. Hooker. The publication in quick succession of several works with a similar scope, may be taken as an indication of a reviving interest in British botany. Thirty years since, when the Linnean system of classification was still in use, a sufficient acquaintance with plants to enable anyone to give the Latin names of the species of their own districts was a fashionable acquirement, especially with ladies. The knowledge, however, was extremely superficial; it consisted mainly in counting the number of stamens and of pistils, so as to determine the class and order, and of observing the trivial specific characters of the foliage, colour and size of the flowers, &c., and was unaccompanied with the least real acquaintance with structural or physiological botany. An artificial classification like that of Linnæus, must always conduce to this result, and the ease with which plants can be named by such a method, is in itself an evil rather than an advantage. When we advance from an empirical to a natural system, in which the diagnoses of the orders depend on a variety of characters, some of them connected with minute details of structure, the gain, both to the learner and teacher, is immense. The learner is compelled to begin at the root of the matter, and to acquaint himself with the structure and physiological function of every separate organ, and with the different forms it may assume, before he attempts to name a plant; and the teacher can no longer cram his class with that showy surface knowledge which is the bane of popular science teaching. The general adoption of the Natural system of classification was followed by a great falling-off in the ranks of amateurs. The number of real students of botany is now however, we hope, increasing day by day, and the substantial interest and instruction derived from the science are in proportion enormously augmented.

The Student's Flora of the British Islands.

By J. D. Hooker, Director of the Royal Gardens, Kew. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1870.)