380 



the Altaic chain of mountains, and the vast plains at their feet, where 

 the mean temperature of the interior of the earth's crust is but little 

 above the freezing-point the year through, yet what an array of even 

 southern types of vegetation does the short and not very warm sum- 

 mer of some five months' duration at most unfold to the botanical 

 traveller, in the various species of Zygophyllaceae, Rutacese, Amarylli- 

 daceae, LiliaceaB, Tamariscacese, and even of arborescent Leguminosse, 

 in Halodendron, Caragana, &c, a proof that Nature is not easily re- 

 pressed in her efforts to decorate this world of ours with all that is 

 fair and lovely, even where climate is most opposed to her benign 

 endeavours ! And shall not our happy island of Great Britain possess 

 some floral beauties truly her own, when the same have been so la- 

 vishly bestowed on rude Siberia's ice-bound hills and deserts ? May 

 not the lime and beech clothe our .slopes as well as those of France 

 and Germany, our woods be carpeted with periwinkle and " Violets 

 dim," festooned with the wild hop-vine, or made radiant with spring 

 daffodils, as well as those of our neighbours across the Channel, with- 

 out having our faith in the rightful possession of these gifts of Flora 

 shaken or put to flight by eternally hearing from the lips of some bo- 

 tanical infidel or other, the ungracious exclamation, " vix ea nostra 

 voco ? " 



It will not, I think, be difficult to trace the causes which have led 

 to this remarkable scepticism in the botanists of Great Britain, which 

 I shall now briefly proceed to consider. 



Isolation from the rest of Europe by natural position, and a long 

 war, had, for a succession of years before the opening of the conti- 

 nent in 1815, thrown our botanists upon the scanty stores of informa- 

 tion relative to our native plants which could be gleaned from the few 

 floras of the kingdom then extant. Since then, and previously to the 

 appearance of the Manual, our standard British floras had been com- 

 piled by botanists residing in the middle or northern parts of the is- 

 land, and who were either not very assiduous in their investigations 

 in the field (in some cases from disinclination, in others from physical 

 inability for the performance of a task so laborious and demanding 

 such continued exercise of patience and perseverance), or had their 

 time and thoughts engaged with professional duties, or devoted to the 

 interests of the science in a more general way. Hence it happened, 

 that these floras, excellent as they were in other respects, were ex- 

 tremely defective on some points where minute and oft-repeated per- 

 sonal observation was required to attain to accuracy. Such were the 

 flowering-times of the species, their distribution over the country, and 



