381 



the question of spontaneity. The want of foreign authors, by consult- 

 ing whose writings these and many similar omissions and mistakes might 

 have been avoided, but of whose labours we neglected to avail ourselves 

 long after they were made accessible to us by the peace, gave para- 

 mount authority in turn to the Floras of Withering, Smith and 

 Hooker, and the tendency in mankind to credit the verba magistri 

 rather than take the trouble to think and inquire for themselves, pro- 

 pagated a host of errors on these heads, whilst opinions were bandied 

 about at second hand, without any accession of truth from abroad, in 

 an endless round of crude assertion or conjecture. Add to this, that 

 the comparatively few field botanists of the day were for the most 

 part men of the old Linnaean school of collectors, who, if they could 

 but add a rare plant to their herbarium, or a new species to the na- 

 tional flora, were little solicitous to advance the philosophy of the 

 science by any observations on the structure, habits or distribution of 

 our indigenous vegetation. We are too prone to imagine that in the 

 way of discovery all has been found that can be found, and it has 

 more than once happened to myself to hear on the announcement of 

 a new plant an expression of doubt or surprise, such as, " Oh, indeed ! 

 but I cannot find it in Hooker, Smith or Withering ;" the process of 

 inferential reasoning being apparently this : if a native, it should be 

 in those authors, — those great authorities could hardly have been ig- 

 norant of its existence, it has therefore probably been planted or 

 otherwise introduced. 



Fries* complains, that the botanists of middle Sweden do not suf- 

 ficiently confide in the genial climate and soil of Scania, and hence 

 refuse admittance into the 'Flora Suecica' to many plants which he 

 thinks should rightfully enter therein, because not having seen them 

 truly wild in their own districts, they cannot be persuaded to believe 

 them so in this, the most southerly province of Scandinavia. A simi- 

 lar and equally erroneous impression as regards the plants of our 

 southern coast may be occasionally traced in the floras of Scotland 

 and the north of England, in which some of our most indubitably na- 

 tive plants have had their spontaneity questioned all over the king- 

 dom, because in those parts of it they never appear as aboriginals. t 



* Fries Nov. Fl. Suec. p. 10. 



f Thus in the ' Flora of Forfarshire,' very lately published, the author observes of 

 Narcissus Pseudo-narcissus (p. 191), that " it has probably no claim to be considered a 

 British plant, but is hardy and easily naturalized." Mr. Gardiner could never have 

 seen this species as it displays its boundless profusion of flowers over acres of our re- 

 motest woodlands, or have studied its geographical distribution on the continent, or 



Vol. hi. 3 d 



