78 OBSEnVATIONS ON FLOUAL CHANGES. 



traveller, in the various species of Zygoj)Jiyllaceai, Butaccoe, AraarylUJacece, 

 Liliacece, Tamaricacecs, and even of arborescent Leguminosce in Halodendron, 

 Caragana, etc. — a proof that Nature is not easily repressed in her efforts to 

 decorate this world of ours with all that is fair and lovely, even where climate 

 is most opposed to her benign endeavours! And shall not our happy island 

 of Great Britain possess some floral beauties truly her own, when the same 

 have been so lavishly bestowed on rude Siberia's ice-bound hills and deserts? 

 May not the lime and beech clothe our slopes as well as those of France and 

 Germany; our woods be carpeted with Periwinkle and ^Violets dim,' festooned 

 with the wild Hop-vine, or made radiant with spring Daffodils, as well as those 

 of our neighbours across the Channel,- without having our faith in the rightful 

 possession of these gifts of Flora shaken or pvit to flight by eternally hearing 

 from the lips of some botanical infidel or other the ungracious exclamation — 

 *Vix ea nostra voco?'" 



Taking a somewhat different view of the subject from that adopted by 

 Dr. Bromfield, we are free to allow that most of the plants stigmatized by 

 botanists in these days as aliens, are in reality introductions from other lands, 

 which, finding suitable soil and climate, have taken up their abode in our 

 island. But why regard them as unworthy of the attention of the British 

 botanist? This is a question which has not, as yet, been answered to our 

 satisfaction; and we are entitled to hold our opinions on the subject until a 

 satisfactory reply is offered. 



If Botany is still to continue the investigation of the recent, and not 

 entirely of the Fossil Flora, then we are not entitled to place limits to the 

 Floras of certain countries and districts, and blind ourselves to the changes 

 which they are undergoing before our very eyes. It has been clearly shewn that 

 the vegetation of Britain has at one time or other, been entirely derived from 

 continental Europe,^ introduced, it may be, at a remote period. The British 

 Isles cannot, therefore, as has been remarked, be considered as a centre of 

 vegetation; and seeing that our British Flora is entirely made up of stragglers 

 from other lands, I cannot imagine how a difference of period in the intro- 

 duction of a species should affect the validity of that introduction; how the 

 mere circumstance of precedence in point of time should give, to certain plants, 

 a right to be considered the indigenous productions of the land, to the 

 exclusion of others which have arrived upon our shores in a somewhat similar 

 manner, as colonists at a later period. The circumstance that our knowledge 

 of the introduction of the former is arrived at by means of theoretical 

 reasoning; of the latter, by the direct evidences of our own senses, ought not 

 to lead us to such a conclusion. 



Let us see how far the changes at present going on in our Flora, are 

 analogous to those of earlier date, which are considered by the botanists of 

 the present day, to be the only legitimate changes which we ought to discern. 



* One exception occurs in the case of Unoeaulon septangulare, whicli is not laiown on the 

 European continent; but this is no evidence tliat it never existed there. 



