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species and what is a variety, as distinguished or distinguishable by 

 technical characters in books. And if not true species, why do the 

 specimens collected in island A invariably present some peculiarities 

 by which they can be separated from those collected in island B, by 

 the eye of a person familiar with them, although technical language 

 may not suffice to convey those peculiarities clearly to the minds of 

 others ? Does climate gradually bring about these differences ; ope- 

 rating so slowly that many years or centuries of cultivation in island 

 A are required, before the posterity of plants brought from B shall 

 have thus far changed ? Have these apparently two species had dif- 

 ferent origins, each under its own climatal conditions, and not been 

 afterwards varied ? But I might ask a score of unanswerable questions, 

 or questions that cannot be answered under existing knowledge ; and 

 I will therefore prefer to state the circumstances, and leave others to 

 ask queries of themselves, and reply thereto as they best can. 



When in the islands of Fayal and Flores, in 1842, I found a species 

 of Lysimachia in several places, which, while it presented considerable 

 resemblance to our native L. nemorum, yet was sufficiently different 

 in general appearance as to be then deemed a novel species by myself; 

 and it is not often a fault with me to err on the side of "splitting" 

 species. After returning to England I ascertained that the Azoric 

 Lysimachia had been figured in the ' Botanical Magazine,' n. 3273, 

 imder name of Lysimachia azorica {Hornem.) ; although, as then ap- 

 peared to me, rather inaccurately. Subsequently, in 1844, a 'Flora 

 Azorica' was published by Seubert; and in this latter work the Lysi- 

 machia azorica was placed as a variety of the European L. nemorum, 

 on the alleged ground of its indicated characters being too inconstant 

 for specific diagnosis. Nevertheless, my own recollection of the plant, 

 as seen in the Azore islands, the specimens brought thence and pre- 

 served in my herbarium, and living plants raised in England from 

 their seeds, all appeared to forbid this union, or " lumping," of the two 

 quasi-species. 



I procured roots of the wild English Lysimachia nemorum, and 

 kept them in cultivation under precisely the same conditions of soil 

 and shelter, as I kept the plants raised from seeds of L. azorica col- 

 lected in Fayal or Flores, and also other plants raised again from seeds 

 of the latter ripened in England. Thus grown side by side, both in 

 flower-pots and in the ground, the two apparent species preserved 

 sufficiently obvious differences of general habit, to prevent any chance 

 of mistaking one for the other, even on a cursory glance ; and on 

 closer inspection they yielded characters which would readily distin- 



