Proceedings. 59 



in Essex was recorded as long ago as 1666, and so recently 

 as 1860 Essex was the only county in which it was known. 

 In a locality near Caterham it is protected by growing on the 

 edge of a field, amongst a few small bushes, but its hold is 

 precarious. 



Examples may be cited of plants that have established 

 themselves and held their own for many years, such as 

 Impatiens fulva, a North American plant, which appeared on 

 the banks of the Wey at Guildford at least fifty years ago, 

 and is still spreading ; Trifolium stellatum, which has been 

 confined for forty years or more to one station on the side of 

 Shoreham Harbour, where it extends for about thirty yards ; 

 it probably came there with foreign ballast ; Lepidmm Draba, 

 which is said to have got a footing in Kent when chaflf- 

 mattresses used in the Walcheren Expedition were demolished; 

 it grows fi-eely on railway-banks, both in the South Eastern 

 and Midland Counties, so most likely it has been re-introduced 

 many times with Eussian Oats. 



Ornithogalum nutans is a plant less likely to spread. Three 

 or four plants of it have grown for thirty years or more on a 

 high sandy bank at EedhiU. How they got there I cannot tell. 



Qalbisoga parviflora, a Peruvian composite, has estabhshed 

 itself in the roads about Kew. 



A more interesting case, because rather more remote, is 

 that of Linaria Cyvibalaria, a European jilant, now spread 

 through this country on old walls as far north as Perth. I 

 am told by Dr. Bossey, on the authority of Mr. Anderson, the 

 Chelsea gardener whom he knew fifty years ago, that this 

 toadflax started from the Chelsea Botanic Gardens fully a 

 century ago. Even within my memory it has very much 

 increased in our neighboui-hood. 



A striking feature in the flora of Great Britain, and indeed 

 of Europe generally as compared with America, is the paucity 

 of species of forest-trees. In Great Britain we can only 

 reckon up fifteen species of indigenous forest-trees, and 

 eighteen smaller trees. Of these thirty-three, only nine ex- 

 tend southward into North Africa. Prof. Asa Gray, in his 

 recent address at Montreal, spoke of the Mediterranean as 



