I860.] CYNOGLOSSUM SYLVATICUM. 239 



and also taken deep root in most quarters, even among the most 

 critical and best informed modern botanists. 



This species for many years was regarded as only a variety of 

 C. officinale, and the same duration was assigned to the one as 

 has been perhaps rashly assumed as that of the other. The vene- 

 rable botanists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries usually 

 describe only cultivated plants, and some may have lost even per- 

 ennials after flowering only once, while some might have suc- 

 ceeded in preserving them in their collections for a longer period. 

 This is a probable cause why both species of Cynoglossum were 

 described as biennial by some and as perennial by others. When 

 it was judged fit to detach the younger species from the elder, the 

 former very naturally was expected to conform to the natural 

 laws of the latter, or that the daughter would be of the same 

 character, if not exactly of the same size and complexion, as the 

 mother. Hence it may be inferred, without any considerable 

 breach of the laws of charity, that Hudson concluded that the 

 one, namely, var. virens, would live as long as the other, viz. the 

 original C. officinale, or that both were of indefinite, or, as it is 

 usually stated, of perennial, duration. 



The mistake can be traced to Dr. Withering ; for Hudson is 

 right about the longevity of C. sylvaticum, though there is no 

 positive evidence to establish the perennial duration of C. offici- 

 nale. If this had been stated by a meaner authority than Dr. 

 Withering, the statement would not have been so implicitly fol- 

 lowed. It is human to err; but only the celebrated and great 

 propagators of error get their errors indorsed or credited by 

 shoals oi goube-mouches, who readily assent to the dicta of some 

 great master spirit. 



It is neither extraordinary nor unaccountable that this mistake 

 about the durability of C. sylvaticum should have crept into our 

 books about British plants, and should have so long passed current 

 and unchallenged as an indefeasible and incontrovertible fact, but 

 that there should be any question about the nativity of the plant 

 in the Carse of Gowrie is one of the most absurd of aU imaginable 

 absurd hallucinations. Is this fact — for fact it is, in spite of all 

 that botanical geographers maintain — rejected because it appears 

 in Hooker^s ' Flora Scotica ' with the authority of George Don 

 appended ? There are some who sneer at the bare mention of the 

 name. But granted that some plants reported by this keen and 



