Flora Orientalis

Abstract

A BRIEF notice of the eminent author of the monumental work which the present volume brings to a close appeared in NATURE (vol. xxxii. p. 540), a day or two after his decease, and it is there mentioned that he had for some time been engaged on a supplement to his “ Flora Orientalist,” the body of which was completed in 1881. That supplement is now fortunately in the hands of botanists, and an opportunity is offered for a more comprehensive notice of the author and his work, as a whole, than has hitherto been published in this country. Apart from the value of the work to the systematist and phytogeographer, it possesses an interest for a wide circle, inasmuch as it deals with the vegetation of those countries of the greatest historical attractions. As the title indicates, the eastern limit of the area of the “ Flora Orientalis” is India, and now there are other works actually in progress, which, although they will not by any means exhaust the flora of the rest of Asia, will add vastly to what is known. Sir Joseph Hooker's “ Flora of British India” has reached the sixth volume, and the indefatigable author is now engaged on the Orchideæ (the largest order in the British Indian flora, represented by upwards of 1000 species); and we may reasonably hope, now that he is free from official duties, that he will nnish it in the course of four or five years. But the energy and perseverance required to get through such an amount of descriptive botany as that accomplished by such men as Bentham, Boissier, and Hooker, can be estimated by few except those similarly engaged.

Flora Orientalis, sive Enumeratio Plantarum in Oriente a Græcia et Ægypto ad Indiæ Fines hucusque Observatarum.

Auctore Edmond Boissier. Supplementum, editore R. Buser. (Genevæ et Basileæ apud H. Georg, Bibliopolam, 1888)