Influence of Habitat on Plant Habit. 131 



of Paisley, had disturbed and troubled the monks, and had by unjust 

 spoliation deprived them of their rents. He remembered it, he 

 said, with sorrow, and it gave him many a pang-. Clitod referens 

 dolemlo mi(/t)plicitei- [xvuitiilt (Reg'. Passelet, 82-83). So now, on 

 28th January, he and his son tog^ether renounced all the claims 

 formerly put forward under which these wrongs had been done 

 and these rents uplifted. It is scarce possible to mistake this. It 

 is a death-bed act, the dying man's i-estitution, that great pre- 

 requisite to the absolution necessary before the soul even of a 

 victorious hero can pass into everlasting peace. We do not know 

 what was the exact day of his death, although it is on record that 

 he was dead before 15th May following. We can well suppose 

 that the last hour was drawing near, the extreme miction soon to 

 be administered, when on 28th January, 1450, just three months 

 after 23rd October, 1449, he made this pathetic confession. 

 Capable of being viewed in many lights — a justification of priestly 

 right, an abuse of priestly power, an example of mediaeval super- 

 stition, or a true case of a repentant conscience — it is even less 

 dubiously historical than that splendid share in the battle of Sark 

 which in a measui-e still lives on the lips of men. In the " Wallace 

 Papers," the modest " Genealogie," dry and brief though it be, 

 seems to linger for a moment of pride in telling how the Ayrshire 

 family cherished as a monument and heirloom " the standard 

 which he carried at the feig'ht." 



V. — The Influence of Habitat on Plant Habit, ^y Mr G. F. 

 Scott-Elliot. 



After a botanical expedition to Egypt, it seemed to me that it 

 might be possible to show the dependence of Habit upon Habitat 

 by a statistical method. I therefore, with the kind permission of 

 Mr Carruthers, examined the Ranunculacese, Papaveracese, and 

 Cruciferte in the British Museum, and also those in the Kew 

 Herbarium, for which I have to thank the authoi'ities. Unfortu- 

 nately the number of specimens in which the habitat admitted of 

 tabulation was very small ; the labour of collecting is greatly 

 increased by making notes of the habitat of each specimen, and 

 very few consider such notes of any importance. In these 3 

 orders I only found 230 species in which both habit and habitat 

 could be arranged under definite, distinct headings. The work 



