18 TRANSACTIONS. 
Kirkeudbrightshire and Dumfriesshire, but from the paucity of 
information at the time, it was deemed advisable in the compila- 
tion of our Jocal Flora to restrict the list of Wigtownshire plants 
to a few of the rarer ones, as given in the Appendix. Very strangely, 
Wigtownshire, as regards its flora, was, until a few years ago, as 
much a /erra incognita as some counties of our Western Highlands. 
The late Professor Balfour of Edinburgh and other botanists paid 
flying visits to the county and recorded some of its rarer plants, 
especially those found in the neighbourhood of the Mull of Gal- 
loway, some of which, I have heard, were obtained by means of a 
boat. Such hasty visits lack the true means of knowing the flora 
of a district, viz., systematic research. Records of Wigtownshire 
plants are also found in the old Statistical Account of Scotland, in 
the Herbarium and Transactions of the Edinburgh Botanical 
Society, in the Transactions of the Philosophical Society of Glas- 
gow, and in similar scattered literature. These records are, how- 
ever, from 30 to 40 years old, and therefore many formerly 
recorded plants of “ The Shire” require re-discovery. A great 
number of the Wigtownshire plants given in the Appendix to our 
local flora were observed by myself during two visits to Port Logan 
about 10 or 12 years ago. Mr Charies Bailey visited Wigtown- 
shire in 1883, and made a few additions to its list of plants, but 
it was in 1883 that Mr G. C. Druce, of Oxford, who delights 
to botanise in out-of-the-way unexplored corners, gave an almost 
complete list of Wigtownshire plants. Inthe summer of that year, 
under the very great disadvantage of a sprained ankle, he botan- 
ised for five days the greater part of the county, and notwithstand- 
ing his accident and the shortness of the time at his disposal, his 
list is really astonishing in its completeness. During the past two 
summers I have personally verified the great majority of the plants 
in his list. In his list given in the Botanical Record Club Report 
for 1883, he begins his remarks in the following words: “The 
accompanying catalogue of Wigtownshire plants fills up the only 
gap in the counties of Britain for which no lists of common plants 
has been supplied to Mr H.C. Watson, or to the Record Club.” 
Botanically considered this statement is not creditable to the dis- 
trict. At the end of his list he gives this summary :-— 
Recorded before ... aa me ae 35 
Bailie’s additions... a aed Aan 10 
New species recorded... ot ..2y 439 
Aliens and denizens ee aur i 33 
Varieties ... a ths Be Af 35 
552 
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