INTRODUCTION. 15 



Next to Agrarians, we may notice those interlopers 

 or garden Stragglers who, coming to the land origin- 

 ally as entire strangers, have taken the first oppor- 

 tunity of escaping from their narrow bounds, and 

 become squatters on their own account. Some of 

 these, as the Wall-flower, great Periwinkle (Vinca 

 major), Myrrliis odorata, Eed Valerian, and Teucrium 

 Chamcedrys, have been so long " out on the tramp," 

 as almost to seem entitled to indigenous botanical 

 societyship ; while with others, as in Papaver somni- 

 ferum, the great Snapdragon (Antirrhinum rnajus), 

 and Melissa officinalis, we see how the garden sends 

 away its outcasts. In fact we have only to notice the 

 manner in which many garden plants spread about 

 and wander from their own domiciles, to be satisfied 

 that this cause has operated from the earliest periods, 

 when man advanced his colonies upon distant islands 

 and shores, with the gifts of Ceres and Pomona. I 

 noticed long since how the common Parsley (Petrose- 

 linum sativum), had stolen out of the garden of my 

 then residence, and so passed the threshold of cultiva- 

 tion. Now it grows in profusion on the rocky Isle 

 of St. Catharine, near Tenby, Pembrokeshire, no 

 doubt propagated from the plants originally in the 

 garden of the priest who on that rock once ministered 

 in holy things to the believing if superstitious seamen 

 of his day, and there cultivated it in his little garden 

 of herbs. 



arable field is sown with artificial grasses, or vetches, such plants as 

 Lolium Italicum, or Setaria viridis, will appear, and maintain a pre- 

 carious existence, while the ground remains in pasture, or is fallowed, 

 till the plough again sweeps them away, and the botanist scours round 

 the corners of the field and its boundary banks in vain for what he saw 

 and gathered a few years before. 



