skill and extraordinary rapidity of execution. The numbers quoted give some idea of the magnitude of the results.
For the purpose of a rapid review of the chief writings of Sir William's later years, they may be classified under three heads, viz. (1) Journals, (2) Floristic works, and (3) Writings on the Filicales. Taking first the Journals, one of the most remarkable features about them is the apparent variety and number of the enterprises on which Sir William engaged: this is, however, explained when they are pieced together as they will be found below. His connection during 45 years with large and growing gardens, into which the most varied living specimens were being drafted in a constant stream, put him in possession of a vast mass of facts, detached, but needing to be recorded. The materials were thus present for that type of publication styled a Botanical Miscellany. The majority of the serials which he edited took this form, and though published under various titles, dictated in some measure by the source of their publication, more than one of them was a mere continuation of a predecessor under a different title. The first of them appeared under the name of the Exotic Flora, in three volumes (1823-7), with 232 coloured plates illustrating subjects from the Gardens of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Liverpool. But owing to his taking up in 1827 the editorship of the Botanical Magazine, then in a critical position, the Exotic Flora ceased, and its materials swelled the pages of the more ancient serial, with which he was connected till his death.
To those not intimately acquainted with the other serials edited by Sir William, their relations are difficult to trace. But Sir Joseph Hooker has given their titles in series, with their dates, as follows:
Botanical Miscellany. 3 vols. 1830-33.
Journal of Botany. 1 vol. 1834.
Companion of the Botanical Magazine. 2 vols. 1835-36.
Jardine' s Annals of Natural History. 4 vols. 1838-40.
The Journal of Botany (continued). Vols. II.-IV. 1840-42.
The London Journal of Botany. 7 vols. 1842-48.
The Companion of the Botanical Magazine. (New Series. 1845-48.)
