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Ornithogalum and various other bulbs, and hence the objection 

 is more apparent than real. The Primrose peerless is a common in- 

 habitant of gardens, and unquestionably often escapes, or is carried 

 out from them with manure or refuse into the fields, where, as might 

 be expected in an indigenous species, it obstinately maintains its 

 ground, but this will not account so well for its appearance in woods 

 and places remote from cultivation, for like the following this is a 

 sylvestral as well as a pratal and septal plant. We may indeed sup- 

 pose the bulbs to have been somehow carried into such sequestered 

 spots, or we may assume such spots to have been the sites of gardens 

 in by-gone times, but in reasoning after this fashion we may refine 

 away the claims of any species we please to consider an alien ; such 

 loose and illogical argument has done infinite harm already, being 

 eagerly employed or acquiesced in by indolent or careless minds, 

 that shrink from the labour of collecting and weighing evidence. 

 But whilst we urge every fact that can in fairness be brought forward 

 in support of the right of this or any other plant to be considered in- 

 digenous, we are bound honestly to state anything that makes against 

 our advocacy. N. biflorus possesses nothing approaching to the 

 power of occupancy in this county displayed by the wild daffodil, 

 neither have I ever seen it like that in our remote woodlands, but 

 only in thickets or copses in the more enclosed or champaign dis- 

 tricts, and there, as before observed, for the most part sparingly, never 

 carpeting the ground like the other. These differences may indeed 

 be innate and habitual to the species; still it cannot be denied that 

 they form grounds for objecting, not unreasonably, to the reception of 

 the two-flowered Narcissus into the list of our undisputed natives. I 

 think, however, that Mr. Watson has not done well in branding it as 

 an alien in his valuable 'Cybele,' and omitting the comital census, for 

 if not an aboriginal few plants are more thoroughly naturalized than 

 the Primrose peerless, and the rank of denizen should at least, I ap- 

 prehend, have been assigned it as nothing more than its due. Ge- 

 rarde (em. p. 131) observes, " The common white* daffodil (his Prim- 

 rose Pearles, No. 7, fig. p. 124) groweth wilde in fields and sides of 

 woods in the west parts of England," as we know it does at present. 

 It is said to abound in meadows around Dublin, and I remember to 



* White is printed wilde in the text, evidently by mistake, since the figure referred 

 to is our N. biflorus, and is there headed as above, besides which Gerarde alludes to 

 our other native species, N. Pseudo-narcissus, further on, as the common yellow daf- 

 fodil (p. 133, fig. 2), and says (p. 134) it "groweth almost euerie where through 

 England." 



