The student's flora of the British Islands / by Sir J.D. Hooker.

  • Hooker, Joseph Dalton, 1817-1911.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The student's flora of the British Islands / by Sir J.D. Hooker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/600 (page 8)
    Bentham's and my Genera Plantarum. I have also made changes in the limits of the Species of certain Genera, and of their subordinate forms, in which matter I have often had regard to suggestions and materials laid before me by Mr. Baker (who has again revised the sheets as they passed through the press), and Mr. Nicholson ; and for the first forty-one Orders to notes made for me by Mr. Ball, F.R.S. These last have a special value, due to Mr. Ball's critical knowledge of so many European Floras, and his excel- lent judgment. 1 have further profited by the last edition (8th) of Pro- fessor Babington's accurate and critical Manual, and have collated the whole with the second edition of Nyman's Sylloge Fiona Europcece, and of Newbould's and Baker's edition of Watson's Cybsle. To Mr. Arthur Bennett, F.L.S., of Croydon, I am indebted for revising the Genus Potamogeton, and for notes upon Cariccs. The collation of the British Flora with Nyman's Sijlloga has not been satisfactory throughout, because of the wide divergence of the views there upheld regarding the Species of such Genera as Rubas, Risa, kc, from those held by English botanists. This is doubtless due to the fact that characters which are constant and strong in one country become vague and even evanescent in others ; insamuch that I am led from examination and study to believe that, in respect of the subdivision of the European forms of such Genera into Spjcies, Sub-species, and Varieties, the materials in Britain may give one result, those in France another, in Scandinavia a third, and in Germany a fourth. I am disposed to think that the term Sub-species (which represents a stage of evolution between Species and Variety) should be given to many forms considered by some as Species and as Varieties by others ; and thai this would facilitate the better understanding especially of the larger critical Genera. The various forms of fruticose Rubi, for example, whether all treated as Species, or all as Varieties, present to me a mere chaos ; whereas, when treated as Sub-species and Varieties, however imperfectly, they fall into comprehensible groups, whose cross affinities may thus be more clearly enunciated. Lastly, 1 have ventured to introduce into this Edition, under the de- scription of the dowers of various Genera, characters concerned in the process