The British flora Author:Stephen Robson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: the indigenous plants of Switzerland, printed at Bern in three volumes, and other botanic works. Dr. Brown has given the characters of the plants of Jamaica, in ... more »his natural hiftory of that ifland, printed at London in 1756. Dr. Forfter and his fon have added to the treafures of botany, the characters of a great number of new plants, collected in their late voyage to the South fea, and publifhed at London in 1776. Befides thofe already mentioned, many eminent botanic writers have appeared in the prefent age; as Miller, Hill, and Hudfon in England; Gorter, Wachendorf, and N. L. Burman in Holland; Mo- nier, Guettard, Sauvages, and Buchoz in France; Kramer, Jacquin, Schreljer, Schaeffer, and Crantz in Germany; lleygar in Poland; Oeder, Muller, and Rotboll in Denmark; Vandel in Portugal; Bonelli in Italy, and others in different parts of Europe. After this brief view of the progrefs of botany, collected from various authors, it remains to give an account of what is attempted in the following iheets. The defign of this Flora is to exhibit a catalogue of Britifh plants, difpofed in the moft natural method, with their eilential characters according to the greateft improvements in botany. A diftribu- tion perfectly natural has been long in vain fought after, and perhaps may never be obtained. The method of Ray, as approaching neareft to it, is here followed, with fuch variations in the characters and arrangement of the clafl'es as were necrffiry to render it uniform. Moft of" the titles of the clafles are borrowed from the Fragmenta methodi naturalis of Linnaeus; fome of them are applied with no great propriety, and are only made ufe of for want of better. In the. genera, Linnaeus is moftly followed; the characters are taken from the tenth edition of his Sv/iemaSyflema. nat...« less