1861.] ARENABIA BALEARICA. 53 



whether it will ever get a permanent place in our list of truly 

 British species, time alone, the universal discoverer, will show. 

 It will probably have to pass through the improbable, the uncer- 

 tain, the doubtful, the colonials, and the denizens, before it arrive 

 at the exalted rank of plant-citizenship. 



I intended to offer a few remarks on the term or phrase " im- 

 probable species,'^ but I will, to save time and space, postpone 

 these, and confine my discourse rather to things than to words, 

 except as the latter are representatives of facts or of activities. I 

 will not however pass over the flagrant breach of literary or social 

 etiquette in the giving of publicity to the Editor's note ; although 

 there is nothing in it of which he needs to be ashamed, yet he 

 probably Avould not have written it if he had entertained the 

 slightest suspicion that his correspondent was not an honourable 

 man, and would regard it as a private communication of a strictly 

 privileged nature. I, as a friend, counsel the Editor of the 

 ' Phytologist ' not to trust Mr. Watson hereafter. He has been 

 once deceived : this is Mr. W.'s fault. If he is deceived a se- 

 cond time, the fault will be his own. 



The first portion of this literary and scientific curiosity has 

 now been criticized, and the result is that Mr. W. is contradicted, 

 and we hope is also convicted, to the satisfaction of any reason- 

 able jury, of a double misrepresentation. 



But there is more evidence forthcoming. Listen or look again, 

 most patient of readers. " The readers of the ' Phytologist ' 

 were in a very likely way of being misled into supposing this 

 Mediterranean Arenar^ia a wild plant new to Scotland.'' Ob- 

 serve, lector benevolentissime, that the word wild, underscored, is 

 not ours, but Mr. Watson's. We wrote " new to Scotland," 

 and we mean to maintain the absolute and incontrovertible accu- 

 racy of this ; but we will not answer for the epithet wild, simply 

 because it is not ours, and we have only to justify what we have 

 written, but are not called upon neither to admit nor to disown 

 what Mr. W. has written in our behalf. The original report 

 is admitted and justified, but not burdened with Mr. Watson's 

 addition. 



Read on, gentle reader. " No intimation of a garden origin 

 being stated or suggested, even while the idea of it (its) being 

 A. balearica is attributed to the finder himself." We never 

 heard of this Arenaria as a garden, or ornamental, or a cultivated 



