33 



favourable, they re-appear year after year, occasionaUy becoming 

 quite naturalised. Several foreign grasses have found their way 

 into this country in this manner, as well as two or three species 

 of clover. It has even been conjectured that certain plants, 

 which are almost entirely confined to cultivated land, seldom 

 appearing elsewhere, such as the corn ranunculus and some of 

 our red poppies, however common and generally distributed they 

 may now be, owe their first origin to this circumstance ; or plants 

 which are truly indigenous in some parts of this country may be 

 carried accidentally to others where they were previously 



unknown. 



In the " Intellectual Observer " for IVIay last, a curious case 

 is recorded of « Floral Immigration at Mitcham, in Surrey," in 

 which more than forty species of new plants seem to have quite 

 recently sprung up in that neighbourhood, ''through the agency 

 of the foreign grain trade." Some of these are British plants, 

 though not before knoAvn in that locality ; many, however, are 

 foreign ; the Leguminosce, a family containing numerous species 

 groAvn for agricultural purposes, constituting a large proportion 

 of the whole.* 



In the Bath Flora, we have about ten species that may be 

 considered as mere weeds of cultivation, some of them having 

 shown themselves in only a single instance. Of these the most 

 recently observed, so far as I am aware, are Camelim sativa, 

 Asperula arvensis, and Erysimura orkntah The first of these was 

 found by myself, last year, on waste ground at Weston. The 

 other two have occurred during the present year, as weeds in a 

 garden at Limpley Stoke, that was till quite lately an arable 

 field, the circumstance being kindly communicated to me by 

 ;Mrs. Peacock of that place. 



But many plants find their way into new localities fi-om other 

 causes than conveyance with seed. A large number are escapes 



* InteU. Obs. vol 9, p. 284 



