224 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



accurate, and to put the records into such a form as will 

 most clearly and effectively convey their information. 



The determination and recording of the species and 

 varieties in the Scottish flora, with the study of the distri- 

 bution over the country of the vascular plants, and, to a less 

 extent, of the fungi and other lower cryptogams, have so 

 largely taken up the efforts of Scottish field-botanists that 

 comparatively little has been done in other parts of the 

 science, though these have already made considerable 

 progress elsewhere. 



The influence of environments on the plants and the 

 effects of changes in modifying the characters employed 

 in distinguishing species, the associations of various species, 

 their relations to the animals of the country as agents in 

 pollination and in dispersal of seeds or other reproductive 

 bodies, the injuries they are liable to suffer from animals 

 that destroy or feed on them or cause abnormal growths 

 (galls) on them, their relations to soils, their reactions to 

 physical changes, especially the effects in the lower plants 

 on the processes of reproduction, and other subjects of 

 no less interest have been successfully studied in other 

 countries, though most of them have scarcely been touched 

 among us. All are in want of thorough investigation and 

 of comparison of the results observed in Scotland with 

 those recorded from elsewhere. The plant - associations 

 of Scotland were being very assiduously studied by Mr. 

 Robert Smith, whose early death has deprived Scotland 

 of a botanist of much promise. Mr. Scott-Elliott's obser- 

 vations (recorded in the " Flora of Dumfries") on the insect- 

 visitors to flowers in the Solway area are almost the only 

 records for Scotland in a study that has already an ex- 

 tensive literature in other countries. The galls have formed 

 the subject of papers in the " Scottish Naturalist," and in 

 the publications of the natural history societies of Glasgow, 

 Perth, and Aberdeen, but our knowledge of them is still 

 very incomplete. Injuries to agricultural plants in Scotland 

 were at times noticed by Miss Ormerod in her annual 

 reports, but of plant-diseases in this land little is on record. 



The early history of the flora of Scotland, in so far _as 

 it can be traced in peat-bogs, old beds of lakes, and other 



