622 



is remarkable that Ray in his great work the ' Historia Plantar um' 

 (vol. i. p. 759), though referring to the two old herbalists, is silent on 

 the subject of the Cymbalaria as native to or naturalized in Britain, 

 but mentions it as abounding on damp walls and rocks in Italy, and 

 on the walls of Bale in Switzerland.* In the 'Synopsis,' however, his 

 editor, Dillenius, gives it on the faith of that accurate observer Dr. 

 Richardson, as found everywhere in quarries (in fodinis) at Darford, 

 in Yorkshire (Syn. p. 282). From these facts it is clear that Linaria 

 Cymbalaria has been known in England from an indefinitely remote 

 period, but continued of comparatively rare occurrence till the general 

 diffusion amongst all ranks for a taste for gardening, which marked 

 the latter part of the last and the whole of the present century. I 

 have never seen this species in Italy, or elsewhere in the south of 

 Europe, but on walls and buildings as with us, and in Holland on 

 the brick-work along the canal banks and bridges, so that it seems as 

 much at home here as in any country on the continent, and would 

 probably never wholly disappear from our soil, should our cities and 

 towns share the fate of those of antiquity and crumble into ruins. 

 From its creeping far and wide, by root and seed, it has gained in this 

 island the name of Roving Jenny or Roving Sailor, and in America is 

 known, I find, partially at least, as Kenilworth Ivy, perhaps from its 



* Many plants locally abundant in cmv times, and most likely in theirs, escaped 

 the notice of Ray and his contemporaries, but which omissions do not, I think, go far 

 to prove such species to have been since imported and naturalized, because the same 

 thing is continually happening in these days of Argus-eyed research, that plants are 

 suddenly discovered in places where they must have pre-existed perhaps for centuries, 

 as Erica ciliaris, whilst others have been lost sight of and again detected in their ori- 

 ginal or new localities, as Isnardia palustris, Euphorbia pilosa, Bupleurum falcatum, 

 Cyclamen hedersefolium, Bunium Bulbocastanum and many more. Our surprise at 

 tbe large number of plants added to our flora during the last 60 or 80 years will di- 

 minish when we reflect under what disadvantages the earlier botanists of this country 

 laboured in their endeavours to explore its vegetable productions, from the tedious- 

 ness, expence and inconveniences of travelling, the very limited diffusion amongst the 

 people of scientific tastes or acquirements, and the consequent want of co-operation 

 felt by the few exceptions to the general ignorance and apathy of the age. Add to 

 these, the obstacles to epistolary correspondence from the slowness and uncertainty of 

 the post, the high rates of postage, and the want of a clear, definite, universal 

 language and nomenclature for conveying scientific truths and discoveries between tbe 

 initiated. The perusal of the works of the old herbalists who lived in the sixteenth 

 and seventeenth centuries yet show incontestably their acquaintance with many a 

 plant, shrouded by uncouth names and barbarous descriptive pbraseology, which it 

 is supposed the reformed nomenclature of Linnaeus, good roads, railways and the 

 penny postage have each in their time and turn enabled us moderns to discover. 



