86 The Ottawa Naturalist. [Oct. 



At the time when the plant was first detected at Belleville 

 its isolation there would have appeared still more pronounced 

 if the matter of its very sparing occurrence in North America 

 had been taken into consideration; for in 1878, when Professor 

 John Macotm brought forward specimens from there, the 

 Virginian habitat was not yet known, and the nearest known 

 stations for it eastward and southward were as very far away 

 as Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. At Norfolk, Virginia, 

 it was not detected tmtil 1893, or fifteen years later than Pro- 

 fessor Macoun's obtaining it at Belleville. 



Mr. F. V. Coville, the discoverer of the Norfolk habitat, re- 

 marked that the plant had the appearance of a recent arrival 

 there; but in the case of the station in Ontario, Professor 

 Macoun registers no supsicion that it is other than indigenous 

 there. Indeed, he took it to be native, as we shall see later; 

 and in this he may have submitted to the opinion of authors 

 within the United States, not one of whom, in writing of 

 M. mmiWM5 as occurring with us here, and there southwestward 

 and far westward, expresses a doubt about its being native. 

 Accepting this doctrine, there was, with the discoverer of the 

 Ontario station, no occasion to question how the plant came 

 there, however strangely isolated it was. But here I must 

 reproduce his very interesting first notes about it in the first 

 volume of the Catalogue of the Plants of Canada, P. 15. 



"On ground subject to overflow and on limestone shingle 

 at the ferry house opposite Belleville, Ontario; rocky pastures 

 west of Albert College, Belleville, Ontario." 



Here are given as many as three different kinds of en- 

 vironment for the plant as it was found growing in the vicinity 

 of Belleville, now almost forty years since; and I know of 

 no other more recent mention of Myosurus as being there. 

 Results of a diligent, renewed investigation of the locality 

 after so long a lapse of time would be very interesting, what- 

 ever they might be. One thing, however, which the language 

 of Professor Macoun suggests to me is the possibility of there 

 being in the Belleville neighborhood more than one species 

 of the genus. I refer to the different kinds of environment, 

 in each of which he found the plant growing. The expression, 

 "ground subject to overflow", though not very definite, im- 

 plies the ])revalence of a good degree of moisture; but whether 

 some stretch of low plain be meant where a temporary pool is 

 formed after every good rain, or whether it were a stream bank 

 where waters rise and fall at intervals — all these are uncer- 

 tainties. But the European plant is said to grow there nowhere 

 but in low, moist lands. This is not, however, true of all the 



