INTRODUCTION. 5 
interesting to compare and contrast Guernsey and Jersey as regards 
each of the different sections of their flora; but at present nothing 
of this kind can be attempted. With the important exception of the 
lichens, the cryptogamic vegetation of Jersey does not appear to 
have been systematically studied, and the lists published in the 
second edition of Ansted’s Channel /slands are by no means to be 
relied upon. 
For several reasons I have thought it best in the present work 
to treat all the islands under consideration as distinct and inde- 
pendent botanical areas, irrespective of size or geographical re- 
lationship, so that botanists visiting any particular one will be able 
to ascertain at a glance exactly how much or how little is known 
about its flora. Commencing with the mother island, Guernsey, 
about which most is known, the others will follow in the order 
of their importance from a botanical point of view, and a brief 
description of each island and islet will be given as an introduction 
to the lists, together with such notes as may be of interest to the 
visitor. 
Insignificant as they appear on the map of the British Isles, 
these tiny fragments of land furnish a surprisingly large field for 
patient and painstaking research. When I left Guernsey in 1895, 
after working assiduously for seven years at the flora of that island, 
I calculated that it would have required seven years more of steady 
work to accomplish what I aimed at, and to attain the standard of 
completeness which I had set before me at the outset. 
It is hardly possible to over-estimate the value of carefully 
studying the fauna and flora of small islands, whether continental or 
oceanic. Viewed merely as so many square miles of land, they may 
be of very trifling account; but each of them has something to 
teach which cannot be learnt so well anywhere else, some apparently 
trivial facts to reveal which throw fresh light on the subject of the 
variability of species, or of their distribution from given centres. 
Hence it is that even diminutive and barren islets, regarded as the 
silent historians of past ages, assume an importance altogether out 
of proportion to their size. It has been well said: What we have to 
do is to work patiently in recording all we can in sincerity and 
truth, so that, when the pages shall be full, others may read them, 
and read them in fuller light. 
‘If we take the organic productions of a small island,’ says 
Wallace, in his /s/and Life, ‘or of any very limited tract of country, 
such as a moderate-sized country parish, we have in their relations 
and affinities—in the fact that they are ¢heve, and others are of 
there—a problem which involves all the migrations of these species 
and their ancestral forms ; the whole series of actions and reactions 
which have determined the preservation of some forms and the 
extinction of others; in fact, the whole history of the earth, inorganic 
and organic, throughout a large portion of geological time.’ 
