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about from one place to another through the operations of man, 
Lastly, consider the bogs and fens that have been drained, and 
the woods that have been cut down, the habitats formerly of some 
of the rarest and most interesting species, 
And there is yet another cause of the disappearance of some 
species of plants, at least in the eastern counties, viz., enclosure. 
By this word I do not mean simply the conversion of open 
country into cultivated districts, but hedges now so generally 
adopted for marking off the boundaries of arable fields. 
Formerly, in Cambridgeshire at least, to which alone my own ex- 
perience refers, the cornfields, even those of different proprietors, 
were separated from each other by a strip or ridge of the original 
Jand, such as it was before any cultivation of it had taken place. 
These strips were called balks, and the wild plants that grew on 
them—some no longer to be obtained—had remained there 
undisturbed—it may have been—for centuries. 
From all these causes combined, the Flora of Great Britain 
must be very different now from what it was formerly, at least as 
regards the distribution of species and the localities in which they 
were once found. I would here mention an incident not alto- 
gether unconnected with what has been said above. My friend, 
the late Mr. Broome, and I some years back went to Limpley 
Stoke at the request of a lady resident there, who wanted us to 
see and determine a weed that had appeared in her garden. I 
should state that the house had not been long built, and the 
garden had only been made that same year out of a ploughed 
field. The plant proved to be Lrysimum orientale, not mentioned 
in all our English Floras, and only noticed in ‘“ Hooker’s 
Student’s Flora,” in the appendix, as an alien ; that is a stranger 
accidentally introduced. Yet surely it is hard to say what plants 
are to be considered as aliens, and what as true natives, seeing 
that all our plants must have come from the continent formerly, 
and how conveyed to the spots in which we now find them it 
is impossible to say. Thus in the present instance, I have a 
