FLORA OF TEIGN BASIN, S. DEVON. 133 



present site — are discovered. The plant is not one comparable with 

 Astrantia, likely to have originated with the Eomans, or else the 

 fact of the Selinum growing but a few hundred yards east of the 

 ancient Ermine Street (running in a straight line from Lincoln to 

 Appleby) might be held significant. I myself am compelled by a 

 consideration of the facts in all their bearings to come to a bolder 

 conclusion — one that if wrong is wholly wrong. I believe it a true 

 native in the strictest sense : an aboriginal occupier of the soil — a 

 relic of the time when, as we know, eastern England and Denmark 

 and Holland were conterminous upon a plain where now a shallow 

 sea rolls. I am led to this, most forcibly, by a study of the geo- 

 graphical dispersion of seven of our rarer Umbellifers (to say 

 nothing of other orders), which goes to show how, in England, the 

 range of eastern and western types meet and overlap. Indeed our 

 island is rich comparatively in such "scattered" species, and we 

 have several quite indisputably native ones less likely, judging from 

 their range in Europe, to occur with us than the Selinum. Its dis 

 tribution abroad gives, perhaps, the strongest support of all to its 

 claim to inclusion as a natural outlier, established before the sepa- 

 ration of our island from the mainland ; in this, like other plants, 

 needing no exceptional climatic condition to account for its pro- 

 longed vitality. If it is never found elsewhere in this country 

 (although I believe it will be), and does not spread where it grows, 

 it will not be without companions amongst undoubted natives. 

 Finally, I regard the occurrence of Selinum Carvifolia in Broughton 

 Woods as the opposite of unnatural, and altogether too much what 

 might have been expected, if a botanist had (say) studied Nyman's 

 ' Conspectus' with a view to gathering from its pages what ought, 

 ceteris paribus, to grow in Britain, but was not known to do, for 

 it to be refused a place in our native flora alongside the falcate 

 Bupleurum, Bulhocastanum, Libanutis, &c. 



The plate illustrating the foregoing description has been drawn 

 wholly from Lincolnshire plants, in flower and fruit, furnished by 

 the Rev. W. Fowler. The rays of the umbel are finely scabrid in 

 the British examples, but Joseph Woods in 'Tourist's Flora' de- 

 scribes them as " smooth." A section of the fruit is given in 

 fig. a ; fig. b represents a section of the fruit of Peucedanum 

 palnstre. 



A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A FLORA OF THE 



TEIGN BASIN, S. DEVON. 



By the Rev. W. Moyle Rogers, F.L.S. 



(Continued from p. 124.) 



Fiubus Gilntheri, Weihe. — Christow and Canonteign Downs, and 

 Nitton Cleave ; in fairly good quantity at intervals. 



R. f/landulosus, Bell. — Gidleigh and Throwleigh, Briggs; by the 

 river at Holly Street and Dunsford Bridge ; in Trusham and con- 

 tiguous parishes, common ; rather frequent about Moreton, North 

 Bovey, and Lustleigh. Usually the form rotundif alius, Blox., or 

 near it. 



