1861.] NOTES ON NORFOLK PLANTS. 293 



The probability is that, like his great leader, the magnus Cory- 

 phaus of British phytogeographers, he would ignore the plant 

 because of the humility of its first printed record in this district. 

 But the fact would be still a fact, but it would be as if it were 

 not to the readers of the ' Cybele,' and especially to such of its 

 few readers as rely upon the fidelity of its reports, viz. such as 

 pin their botanical faith to its pages. This northern species of 

 Stitch wort {S. nemorum) does grow, notwithstanding, in moist 

 woods near Ranworth. 



Note. A specimen was sent to the Editor of the ' Phytologist,' 

 and anybody may see it. It probably has grown there since the 

 creation. 



Cerastium arvense is not scarce on sandy hills in the same 

 vicinity, viz. near Ranworth. 



Geranium pyrenaicumi grows on a hilly pasture at Aldeby, and 

 it is one of the rarities of the neighbourhood. 



It is entered in the ' Cybele ' as a naturalized alien ; and this 

 may be so, or it may not. Who would noio venture to affirm or 

 to deny that the author of the ' Cybele ' himself is or is not a 

 naturalized alien ? We may be allowed to differ without bitter 

 hatred about the nativity or the alienism of certain humble plants 

 which are so utterly unheeded as to be called weeds by the mil- 

 lion, and the question about their nationality is scouted by the 

 majority of those who take some little interest in the science of 

 plants. But what does the author mean by the nativity of the 

 localities upon which doubt is thrown by the scanty numbers of 

 the plants, by the proximity of gardens, etc. ? He cannot mean 

 that we have imported the hilly pastures of Norfolk, nor the 

 rocky precipitous elevation of Arthur's Seat, in the Queen's 

 Park, Edinburgh, where this plant grows ! What does he mean? 

 Simply that all the quoted localities for G. pyrenaicum are near 

 gardens, and that in these subhortulan localities there are but 

 few plants to be found ; both of which are pure assumptions, and 

 as far from truth as the mountains of North Wales are distant 

 from the hills of Dartmoor. 



The eminent and learned author of the ' English Flora,' whose 

 religious belief was not deemed very comprehensive by his 

 orthodox contemporaries, might have stated, if the question 

 about the nativity of this plant had been agitated in his days, 

 that the old authors on plants do not inform us that this Gera- 



