Or 
FOREWORD. 
botanists, have been recorded for a large number of divisions, as 
for example Trifolium filiforme, L. In all such cases, and I must 
be allowed to be the judge of them, I record the species only on 
‘unquestionable authority, or for those divisions I have obtained 
them from—and have proof specimens in the county Herbarium. 
It is greatly to be hoped that all the botanical members of 
the Union will help forward the future work by sending to the 
Secretary proof specimens for the plants not yet recorded for 
their own divisions. Any one possessing or knowing of an old 
Herbarium, if the specimens are localised, who would lend it or 
obtain it for the use of the Botanical Secretary, would also 
forward the work. Old floras, if they contain the notes of past 
workers, are invaluable too. 
I can give but one illustration of this. Thompson, in his 
1820 and 1856 editions of the Skirbeck Hundved, recorded 
Avena pratensis, L., for the Boston division. Dr. Lees in 1891, 
in his Botany of Lincolnshire in the 1892-3 édition of 
White’s Gazetteer, commenting on these records, said 
“ Misnomer,” and excluded the species from his county list, for 
no botanist then at work had met with it. With the evidence 
available he was quite right. I met with the same species 
marked in an old flora in 1835. Luckily, the recorder—Miss E. 
J. Nicholson—was then alive, and I applied to her for an 
explanation, expecting to find the species was A. fatua,L. 1 
was mistaken, and was soon put on the right track, By 
consulting the following pages it will be seen that Avena pratensis 
is now known to be locally distributed—more widely diffused 
according to our present information than A. fatua. From the soil 
point of view their chances are about equal at Boston, but the 
advantage at present lies slightly with A. pratensis. It is indigenous 
to the soils of Lincolnshire, while A. fatua is a follower of 
agriculture only. Therefore, in all probability, the Thompsonian 
recorders were correct in their identification. The special work 
on these species led to another discovery, namely, that a hybrid 
between A. pratensis, L., and A. pubescens, Huds., was by no 
means uncommon where these two species are found growing 
side by side. Such cases are the romances of a local flora. 
