ADVERTISEMENT
I t is with much satisfaction that I publish the Index of a
work that, after above S3 years labour, is now so nearly
completed as only to require now and then an appendix,
containing new or previously doubtful plants, to make it a
perfect National Flora, a work that has been attempted in
several countries, but, which is very remarkable, has not
proceeded nearly to completion in any other, although
carried on under the highest auspices, such is the Flora
Russica, Flora Austriaca, Flora Danica, &c. * while an
humble Englishman has been so fortunate as to conduct it,
with the assistance of private friends and the superior merits
of Sir J . E. Smith, M. D. &c. without any material interruption
through an ever to be remembered period of calamitous
warfare, with which it commenced, and with which it
has happily terminated.
I feel highly grateful for the assistance I have received
from many friends, the mentioning of whose names adds
much value to the work, since it will hand down to posterity
a list of nearly all the British Botanists of its time, with
the date of their flourishing in the scientific world. It is to
me a source of great pleasure to contemplate the number of
those that have lived through the period of its publication,
and to be able to congratulate them upon the fulfilment of
the kind hopes they used anxiously to express, of seeing
the close of the work. At the same time, while many others
* I t is worthy of notice, that English Botany contains more figures of the
indigenous plants of other Europaean Countries, than the respective work*
published in them.