Page:Appendix to the first twenty-three volumes of Edwards's Botanical Register.djvu/9

  PREFAC E.

of the value of all works depends upon their having a good index; if this is true as a general rule, it is much more so with regard to books of great extent, involving multitudes of independent facts, and especially in the case of such a publication as the Botanical Register, of which twenty-three volumes have appeared without any classified catalogue of their contents. It is true, that alphabetical lists of the plants figured in those volumes have been already published, but one list stopped with the 13th volume, and the other applies only to the 10 succeeding ones; they are moreover merely alphabetical, while a systematical index is quite as necessary, and they contain no references to the numerous synonymes ascertained during the progress of the publication. These considerations have led the editor to undertake the laborious task of preparing a new and complete index, both classified and alphabetical, of the entire work, including not merely the names of the plants actually figured, together with their synonymes, but references to all the genera and species described only in the notes, and to such systematical and physiological observations as are to be found scattered through the pages. In doing this, the opportunity has been taken of revising the whole of the nomenclature, and of introducing such changes and corrections as the rapid progress of Systematical Botany has rendered necessary. The systematical index has thus become a silent commentary upon the whole 23 volumes, and is an