58 ARENARiA BALEARIC A. [February, 



But it is the most childish of all childish twaddle to separate 

 moral from scientific truth. Both kinds are relative^ so far as 

 humanity is the revealer of the truth, whether it be a truth of 

 science or a truth of morals ; no finite being can possess truth 

 absolutely. This is an attribute of Deity alone. 



What more would Mr. Watson know about the plant, or 

 about the space it occupied on the wall of the tool-house? 

 Why did he not ask Mr. Sim for a more detailed report of the 

 circumstances under which he saw it? Mr. Sim would have 

 told him that the patch of Arenaria balearica was not much 

 more than as much as he could cover with the crown of his hat ; 

 the number of the stems (flowering stems) was probably from 

 fifty to sixty, or perhaps seventy or eighty, — a few more or a few 

 less could not be of very great consequence, even to a botanical 

 geographer ! Mr. Sim knew that it was a south of Europe 

 plant ; this he learnt from his herbal ; but he knows also that 

 there are scores of plants common to the British Isles and to 

 the Mediterranean, to both shores, both the European and the 

 African. How was he or anybody else to know that this was 

 not one of those common plants ? 



But this is not all. " Considering how many localities for 

 improbably native plants have been already reported on the 

 same authority, it may become a matter of some importance to 

 future botanical topographers to ascertain whether this case of 

 the A. balearica is a fair sample of the rest?" This is where 

 the shoe pinches ; it is a matter of some importance to Mr. 

 Watson to discredit facts which he did not know, and for which 

 he was ashamed to be indebted to observers whom he vilified, 

 though just as trustworthy as he himself. 



It may be a matter of some importance to future plant- 

 geographers to know that the localities reported by Mr. Sim 

 have been seen by hundreds of botanists, and a record of their 

 observations, confirmatory of Mr. Sim's, has appeared in con- 

 temporary periodicals. The ' Phytologist' has a backer in a 

 local periodical published at Perth. Also, a report of a recent 

 botanical excursion to these very localities, last Ju-ne (1860), was 

 sent to the Editor of the ' Phytologist,' but, for reasons not ne- 

 cessary to be advanced here, was not accepted for publication. 



We would not insult our readers by remarks on " improbable 

 species" and " garden species," which no geographical botanist 



