31 



Warner's list in "The History of Bath," pubhshed in 1801, 

 contained fifty-six species ; but in the small edition of this work, 

 published the year following, and intended as a guide book to 

 Bath and its environs, a much more extended list is given, 

 comprising 191 species, and including many cryptogams. Thia 

 second list was supplied by the late Dr, Davis of Bath. 



The work, however, of most use to the Bath botanist at the 

 present day is the " Flora Bathoniensis " of Professor Babington^ 

 published in 1834, to which a supplement was added in 1839. 

 The number of species given in this work is 756, but many of 

 these are unquestionably mere varieties of others, while a few 

 appear to have become extinct, if they ever grew in the localities, 

 assigned to them.* In truth, it is not easy to estimate the exact, 

 number of plants growing in a particular district, from the 

 uncertainty that exists about species, and the difficulty of 

 determining in many cases whether certain plants are indigenous, 

 or not ; or how far, on other grounds, they have claims to be 

 admitted. No two authors are agreed, in all instances, as to, 

 what is a species, or what a variety. Between two so-called 

 species, there often exists so many intermediate forms that it is 

 hardly possible to fix the limit that shall separate them. If we 

 do not always meet with these intermediate forms in the country 

 whose Flora we are inquiring into, we often find them when we 

 compare specimens of the species in question from different 

 countries. And this, indeed, shows the importance of examining 

 the plants of other countries besides our own, in order to become 

 acquainted with their true characters. Then again as to 

 indigenousness ; we call plants indigenous which are kuo"vvn to 

 have been denizens of the soil as far back as botanical records 

 reach, or which we may reasonably suppose to be such, though 

 only recently observed. But Floras, we must remember, have no 

 fixed limits any more than species. They are constantly under- 



* See a list of such species in the Appendix at the end of this paper. 



