CHAPTER IX 
THE RELATIVES OF THE HERB ROBERT: 
ITS VARIETIES AND NEAREST RELATIVES 
WARNED my readers in Chapter VII. that the 
observations of which I have just completed 
the résumé were made upon plants which grew in 
moist and shady places, and that they must not be 
taken as applying in all cases to those of a different 
habitat; they must on no account be regarded as 
even a fairly complete history of the typical plant in 
such circumstances, but merely as my own observa- 
tions during less than two years, within the limits 
of a small garden; and if we mean to understand 
the life-history of a species as a whole, we shall 
have to observe it not only in one but in as many 
different localities and different kinds of habitat as 
we can. 
I referred incidentally to plants growing upon an 
old wall, which despite appearances is not so dry 
and inimical to vegetable life as one might imagine, 
especially when built of brick, which absorbs a very 
considerable amount of water. 
A much drier place than an old wall is, for example, 
the stretch of shingle which lies on our south coast 
between Eastbourne and Bexhill, and there the Herb 
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