- [Footnote: Royal Herbarium at Schöneberg, near Berlin, of which he
is the curator, at 74000 species.
Loudon's useful work, Hortus Britannicus, gives an approximate view of all the species which are, or at no remote time have been, cultivated in British gardens: the edition of 1832 enumerates, including indigenous plants, exactly 26660 phænogamous species. We must not confound with this large number of plants which have grown or been cultivated at any time and in any part of the whole British Islands, the number of living plants which can be shewn at any single moment of time in any single botanic garden. In this last-named respect the Botanic Garden of Berlin has long been regarded as one of the richest in Europe. The fame of its extraordinary riches rested formerly only on uncertain and approximate estimations, and, as my fellow-labourer and friend of many years' standing, Professor Kunth, has justly remarked (in manuscript notices communicated to the Gartenbau-Verein in December 1846), "no real enumeration or computation could be made until a systematic catalogue, based on a rigorous examination of species, had been prepared. Such an enumeration has given rather above 14060 species: if we deduct from this number 375 cultivated Ferns, we have remaining 13685 phænogamous species; among which we find 1600 Compositæ, 1150 Leguminosæ, 428 Labiatæ, 370 Umbelliferæ, 460 Orchideæ, 60 Palms, and 600 Grasses and Cyperaceæ. If we compare with these numbers those of the species already described in recent works,—Compositæ (Decandolle and Walpers) about 10000; Leguminosæ, 8070; Labiatæ]*
