68 R. A. PRYOE — BOTANICAL WOKK OF THE PAST SEASON. 



farther detail with regard to the county generally : it will suffice 

 if I indicate roughly the circumscription of the district with which 

 we are here more immediately concerned. 



'No. 8, Lower Colne, comprises the basin of the Colne and Yer, 

 from their junction near Park Street, where " tho' the Verlume is 

 much the greater" river, "yet the Colne usui-ps the Glory of her 

 own name,"* to the point where the united stream leaves the 

 county near Harefield ; including the country drained by the Elstree 

 and Eadlets brook, which belongs naturally to this division, and 

 has no real connexion with the North Mimms district, whose 

 waters flow in quite a difi'erent direction, and are mostly lost in 

 swallow-holes in the Chalk, which thus absorbs the drainage of 

 some twenty square miles of country ; f and excluding the valley 

 of the Chess, and the lower part of that of the Grade, which were 

 formerly combined with it to make up the E,ickmansworth district. 



The re-arrangement of the boundary-line will entail a certain 

 amount of trouble, since it will be impossible to make use of the 

 lists of common plants that have hitherto been recorded for " Rick- 

 mansworth," as it must remain uncertain whether they have been 

 actually observed in the basin of the Lower Colne, or in one of its 

 conterminous districts. Nor is this altogether to be regretted. A 

 good knowledge of the general floi'a of one's own neighbourhood 

 is of far more value than any possible success in the mere hunting 

 after rarities. It is only by the careful study of the plants of 

 every-day occurrence that we can hope to discriminate those that 

 are less common with any degree of certainty. Thus, too, only shall 

 we realize the force of Linnaeus' maxim, " Genus dahit characterem, 

 non character genus,^^ by learning to know a plant as a whole, with 

 a real existence, a vitality of its own, and not as a bare dead for- 

 mality, depending solely on the technicalities of book descriptions, 

 important as their study is at first ; for the broadest views can 

 only be held with safety when they are founded upon a previous 

 knowledge that will often lie under the imputation of narrowness 

 from its faithful attention to minute accuracy of detail. 



A wide, and I hope not uninteresting, field is thus open to your 

 exertions. Of the botany of the valley of the Chess, with the 

 exception of a few of the scarcer plants, nothing whatever is 

 known. 



After all, it may perhaps be objected that I have rather begged 

 the question of the importance of river-basins as the foundations of 

 botanical districts. But in truth no other method was available. 

 Apart from the scientific objection on the score of their repre- 

 senting nothing in nature, thei'e Avas no system of purely artificial 

 lines that could be drawn, so as to present eitlun- any inherent 

 convenience of their own, or to be in any way readily recognisable 

 upon the surface of the country. 



Nor are the hills any more likely to furnish useful divisions. 



• Cliaunry, I.e. 



t Whitakiir, Geology of tho London Basiu, part i. p. 224. 



