84 PEOCEEDINGS OF THE 



had irx view the general extension of the areas of his Atlantic 

 types over western Europe when introducing the term. But if 

 he had it in view originally, he made it abundiintly clear in ' Cybele 

 Britannica' in 1847, that this did not hold good any longer. For 

 he remarks here on page 51 of the first volume : " These species 

 (i. e., of the Atlantic type) correspond in the one circumstance 

 of having some decided tendency to the western or Atlantic side 

 of the island, in contradistinction to the eastern or Germanic 

 side. Although there may exist other reasons for especially denominat- 

 ing some of these the ' Atlantic species,' the name of the type will be 

 here understood as having reference only to their distribution within 

 Britain itself, and by itself." (The italics are mine.) This limita- 

 tion of the term " Atlantic " to the circumstance of a western 

 distribution ivithin Britain — and the same applies more or less to 

 the definitions of AVatson's other types of distribution — was 

 unfortunate in so far as it tended towards a one-sided conception 

 of the British flora as a defached unit. His "types of distribu- 

 tion " may be in order in his scheme of topographical statistics ; 

 to some extent they are also expressive of certain ecological con- 

 ditions that determine their limits. But if we try to make them 

 the basis for working out the relation of the British flora to the 

 floras of the European Continent, or for tracing its history, they 

 break down. It is evident that for that jnn'pose we have to treat, 

 it as a section of the flora of Western Europe Avhose history it 

 has shared and out of which it has recruited itself. This was 

 the standpoint of Edward Eorbes (6) in his brilliant memoir "On 

 the Connexion between the Distribution of the existing Fauna 

 and Elora of the British Isles, and the Geological changes which 

 have affected their area, especially during the epoch of the 

 Northern Drift," published so long ago as 1846. To him the 

 British flora was made up of 5 subfloras, all derived from different 

 quarters of the European mainland. Two of them, the Asturian 

 and the Gallican or Norman floras, cox'respond to Watson's 

 " Atlantic type " (1835). Eorbes enumerates the species which in 

 his opinion belong to the Asturian flora. Seduced to the modern 

 conception of those species they are nine in number. Of the 

 "Norman" type he quotes merely examples, and so he also does 

 for the " Kentish " or " North French " flora, which forms part 

 of Watson's Germanic and English types, but is treated as a 

 Southern type. These lists were drawn up rather loosely and 

 being moreover incomplete they found practically no consideration 

 in the numerous British local floras. They rather based their 

 classifications into types of distribution on Watson's work, which 

 had at least the advantage of definiteness and completeness. 



More recently, in ]899, Mr. Clement Eeid in his 'Origin of 

 the British Flora' spoke of certain British plants as Iberian, Lusi- 

 tanian and Pyrenean, whilst in his Portsmouth address he uses 

 such terms as "Atlantic or Lusitanian plants," " Atlantic ele- 

 ment," " Pyrenean element " and " Lusitanian flora " as if they 

 were synonymous. No definition of the terms is given, but from 



