OF THE EAST AND WEST OF SCOTLAND COMPARED, 13 
by common habits. For an instructive paper on the subject, 
I would refer to an article by Mr Robert Smith, of Dundee— 
whose premature death this autumn we all so greatly deplore— 
entitled “ On the Study of Plant-Associations,” and published 
in Natural Science, February 1899. I might ask members of 
the Society to think back also and recollect a paper read 
by Mr Turnbull here more than a year ago, dealing with 
Professor Schimper’s book on the subject. According to this 
classification, plants are classified as dominant, secondary, 
or isolated species. 
Now, it is at once evident that topographical lists do not 
help us here, for they only guide us as to the occurrence or 
non-occurrence of plants in a vice-county, not as to their 
distribution in it. 
Take, for example, Parietaria officinalis. I have been 
assured by Mr Somerville, of Glasgow, that Parietaria does 
not occur west of Stirling, and yet it is given for Ayr and 
Lanark. This simply means that in the West the plant is 
merely an isolated straggler. In the East you find it about 
most old ruins. It is practically a dominant plant in many 
localities. The predominance of certain plants in each is 
therefore a matter for individual observation. I can but 
touch on a few points in the counties of East and West best 
known to me—Cantire and Edinburgh. 
Cantire is typical of the Southern Highlands. A central 
belt of moor, never rising very high, reaching its highest— 
1800 feet—in Knapdale, with lower reaches of pasture-land 
within a mile, never more than two, of the sea; then 
river-valleys tilled, though only moderately fertile; and, 
lastly, sandy meadows sloping to the shore; with the fury of 
the Atlantic gales and the moisture-laden clouds to break 
over its low hills. Necessarily this will be different from 
fertile Edinburgh. 
The predominant association in Cantire is the heather 
group—Lrica cinerea and Tetralix, Calluna Erica, Vaccinium 
Myrtillus, Empetrum nigrum—and the heath grasses. One 
strange thing here is that the Old World Corn-wheat, Melam- 
pyrum pratense, often gets into this association and continues 
to flourish. Heather is everywhere to within, say, two 
miles of the sea; and into the hill-pastures it creeps, and 
