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there are such centres seoms jirobable from the abundance of forms on 

 particular lofty chains of mountains. The more extensive and lofty the moun- 

 tains the more numerous and varied the families of plants. Hence it is that 

 English botany is comparitively poorly developed, and all derivative. Let 

 any botanist take the entire range of these hills of igneous rock, as generally 

 considered, and from end to end he will find that the stigma of the poet, 



The bare and herbleas granite, 

 applies equally to these syenitic irruptions as to the granite itself, for not thirty 

 remarkable flowering plants will be found that can be esteemed truly native, 

 and all of these are derivable from the European continent. The Foxglove, 

 very abundant here, is generally a devoted lover of igneous hills ; but 

 plentiful as the Gorse is now, studding the Malvern slopes, I have reason 

 to doubt its ancient allocation here, and would not pledge myself to its 

 existence in the time of Caractacus. An English botanist would peregrinate 

 twenty or thirty miles to be assured of finding only half a dozen rare plants j 

 and yet, as I observed only a few weeks since, at Zermatt in Switzeiland, when 

 ascending to 8,000 feet of elevation there, on a particular day, I gathered 

 more than 200 alpine plants all remaikable and worthy of note. Here then 

 are, if not centres of creation, favoured localities for plants now, and yet 

 we have no clue to trace them back as descendants of foimer vegetation, nor 

 would the Darwinian hypothesis avail us without an assumption irrecon- 

 cileable with observed facts. Yet these alpine rocks, redolent with numerous 

 forms of vegetative life, are confessed by geologists to have a later origin 

 than many rocks in this countiy that have no true endemic flowering plants 

 to show. This is a difficulty which geologists have failed to explain, and it is 

 not easy to account for the phenomena displayed. Old rocks would seem to be 

 likely to nourish old world plants ; but if the younger rocks attain a higher 

 elevation, then they have peculiar foims unknown to older though lower 

 rocks. Thus there is no flowering plant peculiar to the Malvern chain, though 

 it might have been considered probable there would be. My friend Mr. 

 Symonds, in one of his delightful books on old stones and " stones of the 

 valley," which he knows so well how to throw and hit with too, has speculated 

 on Alpine Gentians beautifying these Malvern rocks when they were at 15,000 

 feet of elevation. But wliere was the Qentlana to be got from at that early 

 time, seeing that the Alps on which it now flourishes had not then been 

 elevated ? Perhaps if the Malveins were again lifted up, the lovely Gentian, 

 might show its intensely blue flowers there ; but what was on its hoary brow 

 countless ages ago, I would not venture to say, nor has an alpine plant of that 

 date survived upon the range in any part. If then, there are any plants of very 

 ancient date upon the Malvern Hills, they must belong to the Cryptogamous- 

 division, and among this tribe it may be possible to go a long way back. 

 A lichen on a rock may be older than a yew-tree, and if not in its actual thallus 

 as now visible, must yet in its family as lineally descended, and it may pro- 

 bably in few descents be many thousands of years old. Here, as one of oui 



