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were the Channel Islands but one as they are many miles nearer to 

 France than England, the balance of proximity would incline, though 

 not as greatly, yet quite as decisively, in favour of their continental 

 connection, keeping out of view their similarity in geological and 

 other physical features to the mainland of France as additional argu- 

 ments for grouping them with the latter. 



It will perhaps be urged that the plants of the Channel Islands, 

 having been incorporated with those of Britain by the older botanists, 

 and all succeeding writers, the weight of the precedent sanctions the 

 the continuance of the custom. But if the precedent be a bad one, 

 as I think every unprejudiced person must admit it is, the mental sub- 

 jection which adherence to its authority implies, is a reproach we 

 should hasten to wipe away as soon as possible. Botany, in the 

 time of Ray and Sherard, was not the beautiful and philosophical 

 science it has since become, and that department of it, vegetable geo- 

 graphy, which it is so peculiarly the province of all floras, general as 

 well as local, to elucidate and extend, had not then been made a sub- 

 ject of inquiry, or was even so much as thought of as matter for dis- 

 quisition. An extension of the boundaries of the British flora to the 

 Channel Islands, as at that time no recognized principle of unity or 

 limitation was compromised by the act, might appear an indifferent 

 or even natural proceeding ; but the precision of a later day revolts at 

 the attempt to continue the amalgamation of a portion of the French 

 flora, however small, with that of England, on considerations purely 

 political, for no other but these can be alleged in defence of so absurd 

 a practice, unless it be an unwillingness to give up a dozen or two of 

 plants long held peculiar to those islands, which have, like borrowed 

 plumes, been paraded as if of native growth in all our publications 

 since the days of the old botanists above mentioned.* The Sarnians 

 are very tenacious of their own laws, manners and customs, and with 

 all their attachment to the crown of these realms, are not ambitious 



* An advance towards getting rid of these interlopers has been made in the 

 ' Manual of British Botany,' which augurs well for their final ejectment. But is not 

 the appended to the plants of the Channel Islands in that work a plain though ta- 

 cit acknowledgment that such have no business to appear in its pages, as not natu- 

 rally associating with the professed scope and object of a purely British Flora? Why, 

 then, should their retention be suffered to disfigure and mar the unity of that excel- 

 lent hand-book when the remedy is so easy ? Let us hope that in the next edition of 

 the Manual its accomplished author will have the courage wholly to discard these 

 extraneous species by omitting all mention of them ; the example, once set, will as 

 surely be followed as was that by which the abuse was so long upheld before. 



