Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 9 (1871).djvu/100

 86 NEW PUBLICATIONS.

business, however, is not with the zoolo<jical side of tlie book, but with the more extensive catalogue of plants by which nearly two-thirds of it is occu- pied. For the list of flowering: plants and Ferns botanists are indebted to Mr. H. C. Watson, for that of the Mosses and Ueputica to Mr. Mitten.

We are so much accustomed to look upon Mr. "Watson as our veteran British botanist, that it is a small surprise to find him occupying himself with the flora of a foreign land ; it is probable that many of our readers now learn, for the first time, that, so long back as 1842, Mr. Watson spent four mouths on one of H. M.'s shi[)s (then engaged in surveying the Azores) examining, as well as such circumstances would allow, the vegetation of those islands. Some results of this expedition, as far as botany is concerned, will be found in vols. ii. and iii. of Sir W. Hooker's ' London .Journal of Botany,' the latter of which contains a full list of all the species then known. To this were added in the sixth volume, some fifty more found by Mr. Hunt, a resident in St. Michael's. Mr. Watson himself collected some 340 species, and for the last twenty-five years has had many in cultivation in his garden. From all this it will be evident that he is very well fitted, from his own observation, to write an Azorean flora, whilst it is scarcely necessary to say that in estimating the value of the alleged facts of other observers no botanist has had more experience than Mr. Watson.

In our volume for 1867 (Vol. V. p. 89), M. Drouet's 'Catalogue de la Flore des lies Azores,' published the previous year, was noticed, and the careless manner in which, from ignorance of synonymy, the list of species is unduly extended, was alluded to. In the catalogue before us, Mr. Watson credits Mr. Drouet and his fellow-collectors with the ad- dition of but thirteen species to those previously known. The whole number of species enumerated in Mr. Watson's list is 478, and it is probal)le that further research would not greatly add to this number, as Mr. Godman, who collected in 1865, and brought over a fine series of specimens, some or all of which are now in the Kew herbarium, oidy added six species. Of the whole number, the author has seen specimens of all but thirty-eight, and of these some will probably turn out to be errors of name. This is not a large flora for a group of nine islands, lying between 37° and 40° N. latitude; and even of these species not a few are likely to be recent introductions from Europe. The nearest point of the Continent to the Azores is the southern part of Portugal, distant some 750 or 800 miles, and as Dr. Hooker has pointed out, the Azorean flora is mainly S. European or Mediterranean ; about 400 species are com- mon to Europe and the Azores, and it is especially to the rich and varied flora of the Peninsula that the island vegetation has the greatest affinity. Mr. Watson gives a list of ten Azorean species which occur in Europe in the Peninsula alone, and his surmise of this list being probably incomplete is doubtless correct ; published mntter on the Portuguese flora is very scanty, but an examination of Dr. Welwitsch's extensive collection made in Algarvia, the southernmost province of Portugal, would, it is believed, add to its flora several species now supposed to be restricted to the Atlantic isles. Of the European species found in the Azores, more than 270 appear to be British ; the south-west part of Ireland is next after Portugal the part of Europe nearest to the islands, and it is interesting to find some characteristic Irish species in iheir flora, Dabeocia ■poUfoUa and Trichomanes sjjtciu6am, for example. After deducting these Eiirojiean species, some

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