967 



in the present year for renewing the search after fiesh specimens, and 

 a desire to investigate the plant more completely than I had an op- 

 portunity of doing so short a time before leaving this country, have 

 induced me to delay sending an account of it to the ' Phy tologist ' 

 till now. Hence also, my remarks must be confined to the very few 

 original examples of 1846, which were then placed in my herbarium 

 under the above names for future examination ; these, however, leave 

 no doubt on my mind of their perfect identity with the presumed 

 species of the authors whose names have just been quoted. I could 

 wish my convictions were equally clear of the specific distinctness of 

 our plant from P. vulgaris ; the notoriously polymorphous tendencies 

 of which forbid my hazarding any positive opinion on the point, and 

 counsel me to adopt the safer course of assuming both to be one and 

 the same thing, rather than help to burden our English catalogues 

 with another of those dubious hook-species with which, unhappily for 

 the interests of the science, they are so much encumbered already.* 



The characters that distinguish P. depressa from P. vulgaris are 

 fully as satisfactory, if not more so than those which are used to se- 

 parate the latter from its near allies enumerated in the subjoined 

 note. It should, however, be observed that its affinity is rather to 

 P. amara than to P. vulgaris ; the former of these is not now consi- 

 dered a native of Britain, the P. calcarea, Schultz, having been mis- 

 taken for it, if, indeed, the two are not identical, as I more than sus- 

 pect them to be, fi:om the slightness of the marks employed to dis- 

 criminate them. 



In perfect accordance with the descriptions of Koch and others, 

 my specimens of P. depressa differ from P. vulgaris in the slenderer 

 root ? and diffuse, prostrate, almost filiform stems, which lie quite flat 

 upon the ground, and spread in every direction, with irregular, wiry 

 branches, which, as well as the principal stems, are for the most part 

 closely beset with leaves at their base or about the middle of their 

 length ; the older occasionally bare of leaves below, from the falling 

 away of the latter through time. Leaves (in my fresh specimens) 

 yellowish green, leathery and shining, the lower and middle oblong- 

 elliptical or obovate-elliptical, obtuse or very slightly pointed, crowd- 



* Whoever will be at the pains of comparing together specimens, plates and de- 

 scriptions of P. vulgaris, amara, comosa, austriaca and calcarea, with the innumera- 

 ble variations in the size, shape and colour of the flowers and leaves of each, and the 

 diversity of opinion in authors concerning them, must be sensible of the reasonable- 

 ness of withholding a too ready assent to authority that would dissever forms so inti- 

 mately commingled or anastomosing. 



