76 OBSERVATIONS ON FLORAL CHANGES. 



time to time, previous to the period of our island being inhabited, and becoming 

 subject to the modifying influences of civilization; as these changes are 

 sufficiently familiar to the geologist, and have likewise been traced by those 

 botanists, who have given the subject their attention in the peculiar character 

 which the present existing vegetation presents. Nor need I refer to the 

 various ingenious theories which have been advanced, in connection with this 

 department of the subject, to account for the manner in which the population 

 of our island with its present Flora has been eifected, as my remarks have 

 reference solely to changes of a difiPerent character. 



In the early condition of our island, when the wild flowers and plants 

 enjoyed the shade and shelter of widely-spreading forests, and before the soil 

 was marked by spade or plough, or otherwise interfered with by civilized man, 

 the Flora of Britain must have been very different from what it is in the 

 present time of universal cultivation. It may be considered to have then been in 

 its most pure and natural condition, unaffected and unchanged by the commerce 

 and operations of mankind. When cultivation began, however, and was grad- 

 ually extended, and the nature of the soil changed, then, in like proportion, 

 would the character of the Flora change. Many of the aboriginal inhabitants 

 of our primeval forests would decrease in numbers, and some of the rarer 

 species that were confined to a small area, might be exterminated altogether. 

 In place of these, other plants to which the changed conditions of the soil 

 and climate were suitable, would spring up from the seeds carried there by 

 mankind and other causes; and thus would arise an important change in our 

 country's Flora, a change, moreover, which we are inclined to believe bears 

 more of the character of a natural one, than botanists generally feel called 

 upon to allow. Many of the weeds of cultivated ground, and other Agrarian 

 plants, are universally acknowledged in botanical books as true natives; yet 

 there are few, if there indeed be any, of them, but have had their 

 origin as British plants in the manner we have indicated. In its primeval 

 condition, the "land of brown heath and shaggy wood" must have been ill 

 fitted indeed for the growth of such plants as the bright blue Centaurea 

 cyanus and the golden Sinapis, which are now universal ornaments of our 

 corn fields; notwithstanding which, even at the present time, when their 

 seeds are everywhere distributed, these plants are never seen except on culti- 

 vated land. 



However, on taking up any one of the numerous F'loras of Great Britain 

 and Ireland, which have been written, or the "Ci/bde Britannica" of Mr. Watson, 

 (where it is more clearly shewn,) we find in the enumeration of indigenous 

 plants a certain number of ^starred' and ^daggered' species, whose admission 

 into the lists is only tolerated by way of favour — species which are on all 

 hands condemned as intruders — having no natural I'ight to a place in our lists 

 of native productions, and which are, consequently, not admitted in the botanists' 

 considerations — are in fact deemed imworthy of science. The number of such 

 plants differs according to the enumerations of different botanists; but. 



