132 ON A NEW BRITISH UMBELLIFER. 



the late Mr. Watson's tenets on this point, I would rather err on 

 the side of safety, and only claim for the Seliniuii the grade of a 

 denizen for the present until other stations turn up, than add another 

 to the hotanical warnings of the past twenty years, of plants 

 (undeserving of any title but that of alien) for a time encumbering 

 our lists, and fostering false conclusions as the result of a rash or 

 blind form of one-sided special pleading. About the indigenity of 

 a Care.v frifjida, an Af/rostis ni(/ra, or a Cliara obtiisa there could be 

 no question, but a new Umbel of a distinct type, so nearly allied 

 to the northmen's "suspect" Archanf/eUca, comes in quite another 

 category, and I therefore feel it incumbent upon me to advance 

 all that can fairly be urged in its favour. 



Growing amongst wholly indigenous vegetation (of itself proving 

 little), the kind of place in which it occurs is quite similar to its 

 more usual habitats abroad (a point of much weight), especially 

 those in South Sweden and Denmark, where it occurs seldomer in 

 open meadows than farther south, and taken together these facts 

 imply a good deal. There are not, nor have there been so far as I 

 can learn, any '' suspicious " species growing in the same woodland 

 tract, unless MyrrJds, found long ago by Mr. Fowler (not seen lately), 

 may be so considered, save Barharea stricta, which, barge-brought 

 doubtless, has spread up the canal-like Eiver Ancholme (two miles 

 to the east of the Selinmn station), as far as Bishop Bridge. I am 

 not aware if Archangelica has been found anywdiere in Tiincolnshire, 

 but whether or not, unlike that, the Selinmn is not a flower with a 

 flavour at all likely to have ever recommended it as a pot-herb; nor 

 has it (that I can discover) ever been in use in the cattle pharmacy 

 of the rustic farrier, as was Mi/rrhis a century ago. The district is 

 a secluded rural one, in a county as far from exhaustively worked 

 (excepting Mr. Fowler's late investigations) as that of any other in 

 England ; and one, moreover, in which if anywhere (save perhaps 

 Norfolk, Suffolk and Kent) we might expect species of the Danish 

 or Germanic type to turn up. The site, too, on the banks of a 

 lonely pool, is not a likely one for an outcast, but of such a nature 

 one might almost say that if introduced it must have been the 

 deliberate act of some human being. That persons do exist, calling 

 themselves botanists, who wilfully sow seeds in the hope of adding 

 to our flora new glories, there is no doubt ; but the species in this 

 case is a comparatively unknown one, seldom seen in botanic 

 gardens, poorly represented in private herbaria, and of no particular 

 beauty : so, unlikely to have been cast, as Siler trilohmn by the 

 Cherry Hinton chalkpit isj suspected to have been by the Cambridge 

 botanist-gardener. One not very improbable supposition has been 

 made to me by the Kev. G. S. Streatfeild, of Louth. He asks : — 

 ** May this Selinum not have been introduced a thousand years ago, 

 by the Danish fleets which threaded their way wherever they could 

 in our Lincolnshire waters ? I have always pleased myself with 

 the idea that the Northmen brought Aiu/elica Archcnu/elicd to the 

 banks of the Thames." I am afraid the site, by a poolside where 

 no Dane's boat could have got, negatives this, until other stations 

 by navigable streams — the nearest is two miles to the east of the 



